leastways

UK/ˈliːstˌweɪz/

leastways adverb: at least.

Adverb

leastways (not comparable)

(UK, colloquial, dialectal) at least
- “My advice, or, leastways, I should say, my orders, is,” said the fattest man of the party, “that we 'mediately go home again.”1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], “Looks after Oliver, and Proceeds with His Adventures”, in Oliver Twist; […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 137
- […]so that I couldn't help telling her, sir, that in our country, leastways in Virginia (they say the Yankees are very pert), young people don't speak of their elders so.1857–1859, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, chapter XXXIV, in The Virginians. A Tale of the Last Century, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1858–1859...

‘Cook-housekeeper jobs don’t grow on trees,’ went on the woman, ‘leastways not where you can keep a youngster with you.’1967, Barbara Sleigh, Jessamy, Sevenoaks, Kent: Bloomsbury, published 1993, →ISBN, page 32:
“I was lucky, just an arm (lost in combat), and the hope of a life, a normal man’s life, leastways”2018 February 11, Colin Dexter, Russell Lewis, 01:20:14 from the start, in Endeavour(Cartouche), season 5, episode 2 (TV series), spoken by...

What does leastways mean?: Leastways means at least.
How do you use leastways in a sentence?: ‘Cook-housekeeper jobs don’t grow on trees,’ went on the woman, ‘leastways not where you can keep a youngster with you.’
What part of speech is leastways?: Leastways is an adverb.
How do you pronounce leastways?: Leastways is pronounced /ˈliːstˌweɪz/ (UK).

Adapted from Wiktionary: leastways (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “leastways.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/leastways. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.