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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

lee.

A protected cove or harbor, out of the wind.

3 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/liː/

  1. A protected cove or harbor, out of the wind.

  2. The side of the ship away from the wind.

  3. A sheltered place, especially a place protected from the wind by some object; the side sheltered from the wind (see also leeside); shelter; protection.

    the lee of a mountain, an island, or a ship

  4. Calm, peace.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English lee, from Old English hlēo, hlēow (“shelter, protection”), from Proto-West Germanic *hlaiw (whence also Proto-Slavic *xlěvъ), from Proto-Germanic *hlaiwaz (compare German Lee (“lee”), Swedish lä, Danish læ, Norwegian le, Old Norse hlé, Dutch lij), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱley- (compare Welsh clyd (“warm, cozy”), Latin calēre (“to warm up”), Lithuanian šiltas (“warm, pleasant”), Sanskrit शरद् (śarad, “autumn”)).

adj/liː/

  1. Facing away from the flow of a fluid, usually air.

    not-comparable
    lee side, lee shore, lee helm
Where this word comes from

From Middle English lee, from Old English hlēo, hlēow (“shelter, protection”), from Proto-West Germanic *hlaiw (whence also Proto-Slavic *xlěvъ), from Proto-Germanic *hlaiwaz (compare German Lee (“lee”), Swedish lä, Danish læ, Norwegian le, Old Norse hlé, Dutch lij), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱley- (compare Welsh clyd (“warm, cozy”), Latin calēre (“to warm up”), Lithuanian šiltas (“warm, pleasant”), Sanskrit शरद् (śarad, “autumn”)).

noun/liː/

  1. Lees; dregs.

    obsolete · uncountable
noun/liː/

  1. Obsolete form of li (“traditional Chinese unit of distance”).

    alt-of · obsolete
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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.