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

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

Dog on a leash.

Surf leash.

From Middle English leesshe, leysche, lesshe, a variant of more original lease, from Middle English lees, leese, leece, lese, from Old French lesse (modern French laisse), either from Latin laxa, feminine form of laxus (“loose”) or, more probably, from a deverbal of Old French lesser, laissier, from Latin laxāre (“loose”); compare lax. Doublet of laisse.

leash (plural leashes)

  1. A strap, cord or rope with which to restrain an animal, often a dog.
    Synonym: lead
    • 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned:
      A stout woman upholstered in velvet, her flabby cheeks too much massaged, swirled by with her poodle straining at its leash
    • c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene vi]:
      like a fawning greyhound in the leash
  2. (obsolete) A brace and a half; a tierce.
  3. (obsolete) A set of three animals (especially greyhounds, foxes, bucks, and hares;)
  4. (obsolete) A group of three.
  5. A string with a loop at the end for lifting warp threads, in a loom.[1]
  6. (surfing) A leg rope.
    • 1980 February, Drew Kampion, “As Years Roll By (1970's Retrospective”, in Surfing, page 43:
      Probably the idea was around before that, but the first photo of the leash in action was published that year
  7. (prosody) A kind of metrical construct in Skeltonics.

long cord for dogs

a set of three

leash (third-person singular simple present leashes, present participle leashing, simple past and past participle leashed)

  1. To fasten or secure with a leash.
  2. (figuratively) to curb, restrain
  1. ^ “leash”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.