Lead or lede?
lead is a noun meaning “A heavy, pliable, inelastic metal element, having a bright, bluish color, but…”; lede is a noun meaning “The introductory paragraph or paragraphs of a newspaper, or a news or other…”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) lead is about 1,047 times as common as lede.
What is the difference between lead and lede?
| lead | lede | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, verb, adjective | noun, adjective |
| Meaning | A heavy, pliable, inelastic metal element, having a bright, bluish color, but easily tarnished; both malleable and ductile, though with little tenacity. It is… A plummet or mass of lead attached to a line, used in sounding depth at sea or to estimate velocity in knots To cover, fill, or affect with lead | USThe introductory paragraph or paragraphs of a newspaper, or a news or other type of article; the lead or lead-in |
| Example | This copy has too much lead; I prefer less space between the lines | none recorded |
| Forms | leads | ledes |
| Pronunciation | /ˈlɛd/ [ˈlɛd] /ˈliːd/ | /liːd/ /lid/ |
| In writing | 158 times per million words | about once in every 7 million words |
Sources: lead and lede in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of lead and lede
lead
- 1
A heavy, pliable, inelastic metal element, having a bright, bluish color, but easily tarnished; both malleable and ductile, though with little tenacity. It is easily fusible, forms alloys with other…
- 2
To cover, fill, or affect with lead
continuous firing leads the grooves of a rifle
- 3
To guide or conduct with the hand, or by means of some physical contact connection
a father leads a child
- 4
The act of leading or conducting; guidance; direction, course
to take the lead
- 5
Foremost
The contestants are all tied; no one has the lead position
- 6
A plummet or mass of lead attached to a line, used in sounding depth at sea or to estimate velocity in knots
- 7
To place leads between the lines of
to lead a page
- 8
To guide or conduct in a certain course, or to a certain place or end, by making the way known; to show the way, especially by going with or going in advance of; to guide somebody somewhere or to…
The guide was able to lead the tourists through the jungle safely
lede
- 1
USThe introductory paragraph or paragraphs of a newspaper, or a news or other type of article; the lead or lead-in
- 2
Initialism of live end dead end
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, lead or lede?
lead appears 158 times per million words; lede about once in every 7 million words.
lead 158 times per million wordslede about once in every 7 million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search lead vs lede?
“lead vs lede” is searched about 1,000 times a month on Google and 20 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“lede vs lead”, “lead or lede”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.