different between sley vs ley

English

Etymology

From Middle English slay, from Old English slege.

Noun

sley (plural sleys)

1. reed (of a loom)
2. A guideway in a knitting machine.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Knight to this entry?)

3. (weaving) The number of ends per inch in the cloth, provided each dent in the reed in which it was made contained an equal number of ends.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of E. Whitworth to this entry?)

Verb

sley (third-person singular simple present sleys, present participle sleying, simple past and past participle sleyed)

1. (transitive, weaving) To separate or part the threads of, and arrange them in a reed.

Related terms

• sleave
• sleid

Anagrams

• Slye, leys, lyes, lyse, sely, syle

Middle English

Adjective

sley

1. Alternative form of sly

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /le?/, /li?/
• Rhymes: -e?, -i?

Etymology 1

See lea.

Noun

ley (plural leys)

1. Alternative spelling of lea
2. A ley line.
   • 2010, Philip Carr-Gomm, Richard Heygate, The Book of English Magic

     For a ley hunter, local people – particularly the elderly – can be mines of information. Devereux and Thomson recount how they asked a septuagenarian in a remote village the location of an elusive stone, without mentioning the subject of leys: […]

Adjective

ley (not comparable)

1. (agriculture) Fallow; unseeded.
2. (agriculture) Rotated to pasture instead of cropping.

Etymology 2

Noun

ley

1. Archaic form of lye.

Etymology 3

Noun

ley

1. (obsolete) Law.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Abbott to this entry?)

Anagrams

• Ely, lye, yel

Middle English

Etymology

From Old English l?ah, l?a?e (“a clearing in the woods”).

Noun

ley (plural leys)

1. an open field or meadow

Descendants

• English: ley, lea

Old Occitan

Etymology

From Latin l?gem, accusative of l?x. Compare Old French lei, loi.

Noun

ley f (oblique plural leys, nominative singular ley, nominative plural leys)

1. law

Descendants

• Catalan: llei
• Occitan: lei

Portuguese

Noun

ley f (plural leys)

1. Obsolete spelling of lei

Spanish

Etymology

From Latin l?gem, singular accusative of l?x (whence English legal and legitimate), from Proto-Italic *l?g-, from Proto-Indo-European *le?-s, from *le?- (“to gather”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?lei/, [?lei?]

Noun

ley f (plural leyes)

1. law (a well-established characteristic of nature)
2. law (body of rules issued by a legislative body)
3. law (particular piece of legislation)
4. religion, credence, worship of a god

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Related terms

• leal
• legal
• legislar
• legítimo
• lindo

Further reading

• “ley” in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014.