lee
/liː/noun, adjective
lee is spelled L-E-E: 3 letters and one syllable. It appears 54 times per million words in written English, the 1,899th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data, counting Lee, the name). People search “lee vs li” about 50 times a month (Google, United States). As a noun, lee means “A protected cove or harbor, out of the wind” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of lee is lees.
How many letters and syllables are in lee?
| Letters | 3: L-E-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 54 times per million words; the 1,899th 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 lee?
Lee appears 54 times per million words in written English, the 1,899th most frequent word form in the list. The list counts every capitalisation together, so this includes Lee, 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 lee?
- /liː/
Lee 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). Recordings: En-us-lee.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with lee
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: lea, leigh, li (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Also written: li.
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with lee?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as lee.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: eel, ele.
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 lee
- lees plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does lee mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A protected cove or harbor, out of the wind.
- 2
The side of the ship away from the wind.
- 3
A sheltered place, especially a place protected from the wind by some object; the side sheltered from the wind (see also leeside); shelter; protection.
the lee of a mountain, an island, or a ship
- 4
Calm, peace.
- 5
obsoleteLees; dregs.
adjective
- 1
Facing away from the flow of a fluid, usually air.
lee side, lee shore, lee helm
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Lee in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
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 lee come from?
From Middle English lee, from Old English hlēo, hlēow (“shelter, protection”), from Proto-West Germanic *hlaiw (whence also Proto-Slavic *xlěvъ), from Proto-Germanic *hlaiwaz (compare German Lee (“lee”), Swedish lä, Danish læ, Norwegian le, Old Norse hlé, Dutch lij), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱley- (compare Welsh clyd (“warm, cozy”), Latin calēre (“to warm up”), Lithuanian šiltas (“warm, pleasant”), Sanskrit शरद् (śarad, “autumn”)).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).