Load or lode?
load is a noun meaning “A burden; a weight to be carried”; lode is a noun meaning “A watercourse”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) load is about 74 times as common as lode.
What is the difference between load and lode?
| load | lode | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, verb | noun |
| Meaning | A burden; a weight to be carried A worry or concern to be endured, especially in the phrase a load off one's mind To put a load on or in (a means of conveyance or a place of storage) | A watercourse A vein of metallic ore that lies within definite boundaries, or within a fissure |
| Example | I struggled up the hill with the heavy load in my rucksack | none recorded |
| Forms | loads | lodes |
| Pronunciation | /loʊd/ /ləʊd/ | /ləʊd/ /loʊd/ /ləʉd/ |
| In writing | 38 times per million words | about once in every 2 million words |
Sources: load and lode 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 load and lode
load
- 1
A burden; a weight to be carried
I struggled up the hill with the heavy load in my rucksack
- 2
To put a load on or in (a means of conveyance or a place of storage)
The dock workers refused to load the ship
- 3
A worry or concern to be endured, especially in the phrase a load off one's mind
- 4
To place in or on a conveyance or a place of storage
The longshoremen loaded the cargo quickly
- 5
A certain number of articles or quantity of material that can be transported or processed at one time
The truck overturned while carrying a full load of oil
- 6
To put a load on something
The truck was supposed to leave at dawn, but in fact we spent all morning loading
- 7
A quantity of washing put into a washing machine for a wash cycle
I put a load on before we left
- 8
To receive a load
The truck is designed to load easily
lode
- 1
A watercourse
- 2
A vein of metallic ore that lies within definite boundaries, or within a fissure
- 3
A rich source of supply
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, load or lode?
load appears 38 times per million words; lode about once in every 2 million words.
load 38 times per million wordslode about once in every 2 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 load vs lode?
“load vs lode” is searched about 210 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“lode vs load”, “load or lode”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.