fairlead
noun
fairlead is a noun meaning “A device to guide a line, rope or cable around an object or out of the way, or to stop it from moving laterally” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-A-I-R-L-E-A-D, and it appears about once in every 65 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of fairlead is fairleads.
What does fairlead mean?
noun
- 1
A device to guide a line, rope or cable around an object or out of the way, or to stop it from moving laterally.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of fairlead
- fairleads plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is fairlead?
Fairlead appears about once in every 65 million words in written English, the 252,559th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Fairlead in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense device to guide a line:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | filoir, fil conducteur |
| Spanish | gatera |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does fairlead come from?
From fair + lead.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).