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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

lathe.

To invite; bid; ask.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/leɪð/General-American, US
  1. To invite; bid; ask.

    UK · dialectal · transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English lathen, from Old English laþian (“to invite, summon, call upon, ask”), from Proto-West Germanic *laþōn, from Proto-Germanic *laþōną (“to invite”), from Proto-Indo-European *lēy- (“to want, desire”). Cognate with German laden (“to invite”), Icelandic laða (“to attract”).

noun/leɪð/General-American, US
  1. An administrative division of the county of Kent, in England, from the Anglo-Saxon period until it fell entirely out of use in the early twentieth century.

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

From Middle English *lath, leth, from Old English lǣþ (“a division of a county containing several hundreds, a district, lathe”), from Proto-West Germanic *lāþ.

noun/leɪð/General-American, US
  1. A machine tool used to shape a piece of material, or workpiece, by rotating the workpiece against a cutting tool.

    He shaped the bedpost by turning it on a lathe.
    The accidental amputation was due to the guard not being on the lathe.
  2. The movable swing frame of a loom, carrying the reed for separating the warp threads and beating up the weft.

  3. A granary; a barn.

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

From Middle English lathe (“turning-lathe; stand”), from Old Norse hlað (“pile, heap”)—compare dialectal Danish lad (“stand, support frame”) (as in drejelad (“turning-lathe”), savelad (“saw bench”)), dialectal Norwegian la, lad (“pile, small wall”), dialectal Swedish lad (“folding table, lay of a loom”)—from hlaða (“to load”). More at lade.

verb/leɪð/General-American, US
  1. To shape with a lathe.

  2. To produce a three-dimensional model by rotating a set of points around a fixed axis.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English lathe (“turning-lathe; stand”), from Old Norse hlað (“pile, heap”)—compare dialectal Danish lad (“stand, support frame”) (as in drejelad (“turning-lathe”), savelad (“saw bench”)), dialectal Norwegian la, lad (“pile, small wall”), dialectal Swedish lad (“folding table, lay of a loom”)—from hlaða (“to load”). More at lade.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.