Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See lea.
  • noun Yield; produce; assay-value.
  • noun Ley in this spelling (see lea) is used specifically of a plantation of grasses or other plants grown for their herbage (clovers, etc.), to serve either as meadow or as pasture. Leys are planned for one or a few years or for permanency, their composition being governed accordingly.
  • An obsolete form of lay.
  • noun An obsolete or dialectal form of lea, lay, and lye.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun See lye.
  • noun Grass or meadow land; a lea.
  • noun Law.
  • verb obsolete To lay; to wager.
  • adjective obsolete Fallow; unseeded.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Alternative spelling of lea.
  • adjective obsolete fallow; unseeded

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a field covered with grass or herbage and suitable for grazing by livestock

Etymologies

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Examples

  • It had discharged a pellucid fluid, which she called a ley-water, daily for fourteen years, with a great deal of pain; on which account she applied to a surgeon, who, by means of bandage and a saturnine application, soon healed the sore, unheedful of the consequences.

    Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • Even as she spoke, the hair at the nape of my neck prickled; she was calling the ley again.

    Arcane Circle Linda Robertson 2011

  • Even as she spoke, the hair at the nape of my neck prickled; she was calling the ley again.

    Arcane Circle Linda Robertson 2011

  • Even as she spoke, the hair at the nape of my neck prickled; she was calling the ley again.

    Arcane Circle Linda Robertson 2011

  • Actually, Tyler said his dad was going to check out something called ley lines, spelled l-e-y.

    Slayed Amanda Marrone 2010

  • Experimentally, he moved to one of the little runnels collecting the flow - nowhere near large enough to be called a ley-line - and sensed the pressure increase when he interposed himself in the flow.

    Owlsight Lackey, Mercedes 1998

  • Continuing for about three hundred paces farther along the val­ley, which is in this part about one hundred and fifty feet in breadth; several small tombs are met with on both sides of the rivulet, excavated in the rock, without any ornaments.

    Travels in Syria and the Holy Land 1822

  • Continuing for about three hundred paces farther along the val­ley, which is in this part about one hundred and fifty feet in breadth; several small tombs are met with on both sides of the rivulet, excavated in the rock, without any ornaments.

    Travels in Syria and the Holy Land 1822

  • People in our community have even produced a copy of the "ley" that applies to this situation, but to no avail.

    auto permits 2001

  • People in our community have even produced a copy of the "ley" that applies to this situation, but to no avail.

    auto permits 2001

Comments

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  • "I had not been seriously troubled by moles till last winter, when they invaded a seven-acre field I had just put down to a long ley." G.D. Adams, Shropshire, in The Countryman, Autumn 1955, p.137

    November 6, 2009

  • There's always cosmetic surgery.

    November 6, 2009

  • Moles are vicious bastards aren't they. Terrifying if you think about them.

    November 7, 2009