leasow

English

Alternative forms

• lessow, leasowe (obsolete)
• lease, leaze (dialectal)

Etymology

From Middle English leesewe, lesewe, leswe, from Old English lǣs (“pasture”), from Proto-West Germanic *lāsu (“pasture”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈliːzəʊ/

Noun

leasow (plural leasows)

1. (now rare, dialectal, historical) (Green) land as opposed to flood or desert; a pasture.
   • 1803 July 25, Hester Piozzi, Thraliana:

     Reflexions in her Book, strike one as a Statue does among the tangled Thickets of the Leasowes […] .

   • 1826, Thomas Gill, The Technical repository:

     The oxen which are brought on in succession, run the first summer in the park, and in the leasows and temporary straw-yards in the winter; [...]

   • 2012, Christopher Dyer, A Country Merchant, 1495-1520:

     Lords could create a leasow by fencing off part of their demesne, if it was held in a block rather than being scattered over the fields and intermingled with the land of tenants.

   • 2013, Eric Kerridge, Agrarian Problems in the Sixteenth Century and After:

     Imprimis we do present upon our oaths that one Gilbert Wheeler gentleman enclosed a leasow called the Hide containing 20 acres which was common about 10 years past with the fields there.

Verb

leasow (third-person singular simple present leasows, present participle leasowing, simple past and past participle leasowed)

1. (transitive, archaic or dialectal) To feed or pasture

References

• “leasow”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.