Leed

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An archaic term for a language, tongue, or the people who speak a particular speech
2. An obsolete word meaning a language or a nation, a form now found mainly in older texts
3. A dated, rarely used term referring to a tongue or to a people who share it

Etymology: "Leed" is a word with two unrelated ancestors that happen to have converged on one spelling. The first comes from Old English "lēoþ," meaning "song, poem, ode, lay, verse," which in Middle English became "leth" or "leoth" and then "led" or "leod." That line gave English the sense of a song or poem, and it is also the root of the German "Lied" and Dutch "lied," so English "lied" is a doublet of this same word that entered via German. The second ancestor is Old English "lēod," meaning "people, nation," which yielded "leoden" in the sense of "popular or national language, native tongue." Middle English "leden" was later shortened to "lede," and that form survives in Scots as "leed," meaning "language." Because it passed through a shortened form, this sense is a clipped descendant rather than a separate word.