lea
/liː/noun
lea is spelled L-E-A: 3 letters and one syllable. It appears 3.7 times per million words in written English, the 13,496th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data, counting Lea, the name). As a noun, lea means “An open field, meadow, pasture” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of lea is leas.
How many letters and syllables are in lea?
| Letters | 3: L-E-A |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 3.7 times per million words; the 13,496th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like | |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is lea?
Lea appears 3.7 times per million words in written English, the 13,496th most frequent word form in the list. The list counts every capitalisation together, so this includes Lea, the name.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce lea?
- /liː/
- /leɪ/
Lea has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Words people confuse with lea
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: lee (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Also written: ley.
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with lea?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as lea.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: ale, ael.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of lea
- leas plural
- leigh
- ley
- lay
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does lea mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
An open field, meadow, pasture.
19th century, Alfred Tennyson, Circumstance Two children in two neighbor villages Playing mad pranks along the heathy leas;
- 2
Any of several measures of yarn; for linen, 300 yards (275 m); for cotton, 120 yards (110 m).
- 3
A set of warp threads carried by a loop of the heddle.
noun
- 1
USInitialism of law enforcement agency.
- 2
Initialism of local education authority.
- 3
IrelandInitialism of local electoral area.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Lea in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense open field, meadow, pasture:
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 lea come from?
From Middle English legh, lege, lei (“clearing, open ground”), from Old English lēah (“clearing in a forest”) from Proto-West Germanic *lauh (“meadow”), from Proto-Germanic *lauhaz (“meadow”), from Proto-Indo-European *lówkos (“field, meadow”). Akin to Old Frisian lāch (“meadow”), Old Saxon lōh (“forest, grove”) (Middle Dutch loo (“forest, thicket”); Dutch -lo (“in placenames”)), Old High German lōh (“covered clearing, low bushes”), Old Norse ló (“clearing, meadow”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).