Word.ws English Dictionary

leese

/liːz/

leese verb: to lose.

Verb (1)

leese (third-person singular simple present leeses, present participle leesing, simple past lore or leesed, past participle lorn or leesed)

  1. (obsolete) To lose.
    • But flowers distill'd though they with winter meet,
      Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 5”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC
    • They would rather leese their friend than their jest.a. 1598, William Cecil, Advice to his son
  2. (obsolete) To destroy.
  3. (obsolete) To forsake or abandon.

Verb (2)

leese (third-person singular simple present leeses, present participle leesing, simple past and past participle leesed)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To release; let go; set free.
  2. (obsolete) To loosen, unfasten.

Verb (3)

leese

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To hurt.

Proper noun capitalized: Leese

Leese (plural Leeses)

  1. A surname.

Forms of leese

Verb
third-person singular presentleeses
present participleleesing
pastlore
pastleesed
past participlelorn
past participleleesed
alternative formlese
alternative formlease
Proper noun
pluralLeeses

Origin of leese

From Middle English lesen, from Old English lēosan, from Proto-West Germanic *leusan, from Proto-Germanic *leusaną (“to lose”), from Proto-Indo-European *lews- (“to cut; sever; separate; loosen; lose”).

From Middle English lesen, from Old English lȳsan, līesan (“to loosen, release, redeem, deliver, liberate”), from Proto-Germanic *lausijaną (“to release, loosen”). Cognate with Dutch lozen, German lösen, Swedish lösa.

Compare French léser, Latin laesus.

Words that rhyme with leese

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about leese

What does leese mean?
Leese means to lose.
What part of speech is leese?
Leese can be a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce leese?
Leese is pronounced /liːz/.
What is the past tense of leese?
The past tense of leese is lore.

Words near leese in the dictionary

  1. leeroys
  2. leers
  3. leery
  4. lees
  5. Leesburg
  6. leese
  7. leesed
  8. leeses
  9. leeside
  10. leesides
  11. leesing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: leese (page history and authors); Leese (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-lese.wav.

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