lead - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

Chemical element (edit)
PbAtomic number 82lead
Classification data Period 6 Group 14 Block p-block Class post-transition metal
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English Wikipedia article on Lead

From Middle English led, leed, from Old English lēad (“lead”), from Proto-West Germanic *laud (“lead”), possibly borrowed from Proto-Celtic *ɸloudom, from Proto-Indo-European *plewd- (“to flow”).

Cognate with Scots leid, lede (“lead”), North Frisian lud, luad (“lead”), West Frisian lead (“lead”), Dutch lood (“lead”), Low German Lod (“solder, plummet”), German Lot (“solder, plummet, sounding line”), Swedish lod (“solder, plummet”), Icelandic lóð (“a plumb, weight”), Irish luaidhe (“lead”) Latin plumbum (“lead”), Finnish luoti (“bullet”). Doublet of loth. More at flow.

lead (countable and uncountable, plural leads)

Electrolytically refined pure lead

  1. (uncountable) A heavy, pliable, inelastic metal element, having a bright, bluish color, but easily tarnished; both malleable and ductile, though with little tenacity. It is easily fusible, forms alloys with other metals, and is an ingredient of solder and type metal. Atomic number 82, symbol Pb (from Latin plumbum).
    Synonym: plumbum
  2. (countable, nautical) A plummet or mass of lead attached to a line, used in sounding depth at sea or to estimate velocity in knots.
  3. A thin strip of type metal, used to separate lines of type in printing.
  4. (uncountable, typography) Vertical space in advance of a row or between rows of text. Also known as leading.
    This copy has too much lead; I prefer less space between the lines.
  5. Sheets or plates of lead used as a covering for roofs.
  6. (countable) A roof covered with lead sheets or terne plates.
    • 1625, Francis [Bacon], “Of Building”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, →OCLC:
      I would have the tower two stories, and goodly leads upon the top.
    • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:
      These rooms were on a level with the apartments of our friends Bows and Costigan next door at No. 4; and by reaching over the communicating leads, Grady could command the mignonette-box which bloomed in Bows’s window.
  7. (countable) A thin cylinder of graphite used in pencils.
    Synonym: pencil lead
  8. (slang) Bullets; ammunition.
    They pumped him full of lead.
  9. (medicine, in the plural) X-ray protective clothing lined with lead.
    You must remember to wear your leads.

lead (third-person singular simple present leads, present participle leading, simple past and past participle leaded)

  1. (transitive) To cover, fill, or affect with lead.
    continuous firing leads the grooves of a rifle.
  2. (transitive, printing, historical) To place leads between the lines of.
    to lead a page
    leaded matter

From Middle English leden, from Old English lǣdan (“to lead”), from Proto-West Germanic *laidijan, from Proto-Germanic *laidijaną (“to cause one to go, lead”), causative of Proto-Germanic *līþaną (“to go”), from Proto-Indo-European *leyt- (“to leave, die”).

Cognate with West Frisian liede (“to lead”), Dutch leiden (“to lead”), German leiten (“to lead”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål lede (“to lead”), Norwegian Nynorsk leia (“to lead”), Swedish leda (“to lead”). Related to Old English līþan (“to go, travel”).

lead (third-person singular simple present leads, present participle leading, simple past and past participle led)

  1. (heading, transitive) To guide or conduct.
    1. To guide or conduct with the hand, or by means of some physical contact connection.
      a father leads a child
      a jockey leads a horse with a halter
      a dog leads a blind man
    2. To guide or conduct in a certain course, or to a certain place or end, by making the way known; to show the way, especially by going with or going in advance of; to guide somebody somewhere or to bring somebody somewhere by means of instructions.
      The guide was able to lead the tourists through the jungle safely.
      • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
        I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.
    3. (figuratively): To direct; to counsel; to instruct.
      A good teacher should lead their students to the right answer.
    4. To conduct or direct with authority; to have direction or charge of; to command, especially a military or business unit.
      to lead a political party
      to lead the search team
      • 1664, Robert South, “(please specify the sermon number)A Sermon Preached Before the University at Christ-Church, Oxon”, in Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions. […], new edition, volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: […] Thomas Tegg, […], published 1843, →OCLC:
        Christ took not upon him flesh and blood that he might conquer and rule nations, lead armies, or possess places.
    5. To draw or direct by influence, whether good or bad; to prevail on; to induce; to entice; to allure.
      to lead someone to a righteous cause
    6. To influence towards a belief, a conclusion, etc.
      The evidence leads me to believe he is guilty.
  2. (intransitive) To guide or conduct, as by accompanying, going before, showing, influencing, directing with authority, etc.; to have precedence or preeminence; to be first or chief; — used in most of the senses of the transitive verb.
  3. (heading) To begin, to be ahead.
    1. (transitive) To go or to be in advance of; to precede; hence, to be foremost or chief among.
      the big sloop led the fleet of yachts; the Guards led the attack; Demosthenes leads the orators of all ages
    2. (intransitive) To proceed in front of others; to go first.
      The standard-bearers led and the rest of the marchers followed.
    3. (intransitive) To be more advanced in technology or business than others.
      It leads in the information technology sector.
    4. (heading, sports)
      1. (transitive, card games, dominoes) To begin a game, round, or trick, with
        to lead trumps
        He led the ace of spades.
      2. (intransitive) To be ahead of others, e.g., in a race.
      3. (intransitive) To have the highest interim score in a game.
      4. (baseball) To step off base and move towards the next base.
        The batter always leads off base.
      5. (shooting) To aim in front of a moving target, in order that the shot may hit the target as it passes.
      6. (transitive, climbing) To lead climb. (clarification of this definition is needed ("to lead climb" is intransitive(?)))
  4. (intransitive) To tend or reach in a certain spatial direction, or to a certain place.
    the path leads to the mill
  5. (intransitive) To be a cause of. [with_ **to**]
    Synonym: lead to
    _gambling leads to other vices
    • 2013 June 28, Joris Luyendijk, “Our banks are out of control”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 3, page 21:
      Seeing the British establishment struggle with the financial sector is like watching an alcoholic […]. Until 2008 there was denial over what finance had become. When a series of bank failures made this impossible, there was widespread anger, leading to the public humiliation of symbolic figures.
    • 2013 August 10, “Can China clean up fast enough?”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848:
      All this has led to an explosion of protest across China, including among a middle class that has discovered nimbyism. That worries the government, which fears that environmental activism could become the foundation for more general political opposition. It is therefore dealing with pollution in two ways—suppression and mitigation.
  6. (transitive, usually with "life") To live or experience (a particular way of life).
    • 1969, “N.I.B.”, in John Osbourne (lyrics), Black Sabbath, performed by Black Sabbath:
      Follow me now and you will not regret / Leaving the life you led before we met. / You are the first to have this love of mine, / Forever with me till the end of time.
  7. Used in phrasal verbs: lead off, lead on, lead out, lead to (“be the cause of, bring about”), lead up, lead up to.
  8. Misspelling of led.

lead (countable and uncountable, plural leads)

  1. (countable) The act of leading or conducting; guidance; direction, course
    to take the lead
    to be under the lead of another
    • 1796, Edmund Burke, A Letter from the Right Honourable Edmund Burke to a Noble Lord, on the Attacks Made upon Him and His Pension, […], London: […] J. Owen, […], and F[rancis] and C[harles] Rivington, […], →OCLC:
      At the time I speak of, and having a momentary lead, […] I am sure I did my country important service.
  2. (countable) Precedence; advance position; also, the measure of precedence; the state of being ahead in a race; the highest score in an incomplete game.
    the white horse had the lead.
    to be in the lead
    She lost the lead.
    Smith managed to extend her lead over the second place to half a second.
  3. (UK, countable) An insulated metallic wire for electrical devices and equipment.
  4. (baseball) The situation where a runner steps away from a base while waiting for the pitch to be thrown.
    The runner took his lead from first.
  5. (uncountable, card games, dominoes) The act or right of playing first in a game or round; the card suit, or piece, so played
    your partner has the lead
  6. (acting, theater) The main role in a play or film; the lead role.
    • 1932, Delos W. Lovelace, King Kong, published 1965, page 43:
      "You make moving pictures. In jungles and places." "That's me. And I've picked you for the lead in my next picture."
  7. (acting) The actor who plays the main role; lead actor.
  8. (business) The person in charge of a project or a work shift etc.
    John is the development lead on this software product.
  9. (countable) A channel of open water in an ice field.
  10. (countable, mining) A lode.
  11. (nautical) The course of a rope from end to end.
  12. A rope, leather strap, or similar device with which to lead an animal; a leash
  13. In a steam engine, the width of port opening which is uncovered by the valve, for the admission or release of steam, at the instant when the piston is at end of its stroke.
  1. (civil engineering) The distance of haul, as from a cutting to an embankment.
  2. (horology) The action of a tooth, such as a tooth of a wheel, in impelling another tooth or a pallet.
  3. Hypothesis that has not been pursued
    The investigation stalled when all leads turned out to be dead ends.
  4. Information obtained by a detective or police officer that allows him or her to discover further details about a crime or incident.
    The police have a couple of leads they will follow to solve the case.
  5. (marketing) Potential opportunity for a sale or transaction, a potential customer.
    Joe is a great addition to our sales team, he has numerous leads in the paper industry.
  6. Information obtained by a news reporter about an issue or subject that allows him or her to discover more details.
  7. (curling) The player who throws the first two rocks for a team.
  8. (US, journalism) The introductory paragraph or paragraphs of a newspaper, or a news or other type of article. (Sometimes spelled as lede for this usage to avoid ambiguity.)
    Synonym: lead paragraph
  9. An important news story that appears on the front page of a newspaper or at the beginning of a news broadcast
  10. (engineering) The axial distance a screw thread travels in one revolution. It is equal to the pitch times the number of starts.
  11. (music) In a barbershop quartet, the person who sings the melody, usually the second tenor.
  12. (music) The announcement by one voice part of a theme to be repeated by the other parts.
  13. (music) A mark or a short passage in one voice part, as of a canon, serving as a cue for the entrance of others.
  14. (music) A primary synth, often composed of square, sawtooth, triangle or sine waveforms.
  15. (engineering) The excess above a right angle in the angle between two consecutive cranks, as of a compound engine, on the same shaft.
  16. (electricity) The angle between the line joining the brushes of a continuous-current dynamo and the diameter symmetrical between the poles.
  17. (electricity) The advance of the current phase in an alternating circuit beyond that of the electromotive force producing it.

lead (not comparable)

  1. (not comparable) Foremost.
    The contestants are all tied; no one has the lead position.
    • 2006, Ronald Mak, The Martian Principles for Successful Enterprise Systems:
      For the first time ever, the senior architect and lead developer for a key enterprise system on NASA's ongoing Mars Exploration Rover mission shares the secrets to one of the most difficult technology tasks […]
      Synonyms: first, front, head, leader, leading
  2. Main, principal, primary, first, chief, foremost.
    the lead guitarist in band
    the lead developer on a software project
    • 2017 August 25, "Arrest threat as Yingluck Shinawatra misses verdict", in aljazeera.com, Al Jazeera:
      Yingluck Shinawatra, Thailand's ex-prime minister, has missed a verdict in a negligence trial that could have seen her jailed, prompting the Supreme Court to say it will issue an arrest warrant fearing she is a flight risk, according to the lead judge in the case.

Perhaps from a confusion or conflation with read, which has a single spelling for both past and present tenses, but has differing pronunciations in the same way as lead, i.e. the present's vowel is /i/, and the past's is /ɛ/.
See also red and redd, the obsolete spellings of read.

lead

  1. Misspelling of led.

le- +‎ ad

lead

  1. (transitive) to pass down, hand down, turn in, drop off
  2. (transitive) to lose weight, usually as a result of some kind of training or exercise

Conjugation of lead

Click for archaic forms 1st person sg 2nd person sg_informal_ 3rd person sg,2nd p. sg formal 1st person pl 2nd person pl_informal_ 3rd person pl,2nd p. pl formal
indica­tive indica­tive pre­sent indef. leadok leadsz lead leadunk leadtok leadnak
def. leadom leadod leadja leadjuk leadjátok leadják
2nd obj leadlak
past indef. leadtam leadtál leadott leadtunk leadtatok leadtak
def. leadtam leadtad leadta leadtuk leadtátok leadták
2nd obj leadtalak
future Future is expressed with a present-tense verb with a completion-marking prefix and/or a time adverb, or—more explicitly—with the infinitive plus the conjugated auxiliary verb fog, e.g. le fog adni.
archaicpreterite indef. leadék leadál leada leadánk leadátok leadának
def. leadám leadád leadá leadánk leadátok leadák
2nd obj leadálak
archaic past Two additional past tenses: the present and the (current) past forms followed by vala (volt), e.g. lead vala, leadott vala/volt.
archaic future indef. leadandok leadandasz leadand leadandunk leadandotok leadandanak
def. leadandom leadandod leadandja leadandjuk leadandjátok leadandják
2nd obj leadandalak
condi­tional pre­sent indef. leadnék leadnál leadna leadnánk leadnátok leadnának
def. leadnám leadnád leadná leadnánk (or leadnók) leadnátok leadnák
2nd obj leadnálak
past Indicative past forms followed by volna, e.g. leadott volna
sub­junc­tive sub­junc­tive pre­sent indef. leadjak leadj orleadjál leadjon leadjunk leadjatok leadjanak
def. leadjam leadd orleadjad leadja leadjuk leadjátok leadják
2nd obj leadjalak
(archaic) past Indicative past forms followed by légyen, e.g. leadott légyen
infinitive leadni leadnom leadnod leadnia leadnunk leadnotok leadniuk
otherforms verbal noun present part. past part. future part. adverbial participle causative
leadás leadó leadott leadandó leadva (leadván) leadat
The archaic passive conjugation had the same -(t)at/-(t)et suffix as the causative, followed by -ik in the 3rd-person singular(and the concomitant changes in conditional and subjunctive mostly in the 1st- and 3rd-person singular like with other traditional -ik verbs).
The prefix can split from the verb stem, e.g. nem ad le or le is ad.

lead

  1. (Kent or Late Middle English) alternative form of led (“lead”)

Proto-West Germanic *laud

Old English lead

Inherited from Proto-West Germanic *laud, possibly borrowed from Gaulish *loudon, from Proto-Celtic *ɸloudom (“lead”).

lēad n

  1. lead
    • Exeter Book, riddle 40
      Hefiġere iċ eom micle þonne sē hāra stān
      oþþe unlȳtel lēades clympre,
      lēohtre iċ eom micle þonne þēs lȳtla wyrm
      þe hēr on flōde gǣð fōtum dryġe.
      I am much heavier than the gray stone
      or an un-little clump of lead,
      I am much lighter than this little bug
      that walks here on the water with dry feet

Strong _a_-stem:

Proto-West Germanic *laud

Old English lēad

Middle English led

Polish lead

Unadapted borrowing from English lead.

lead m inan

  1. (newspapers, journalism) lead paragraph, teaser, lead-in (start of a newspaper column, telling who, what, when, where, why and how)