Leash

How to spell leash

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce leash

What does leash mean?

1. nounA strap or cord attached to an animal, usually a dog, to keep it under control.
2. verbTo put an animal on a leash or to hold something under tight restraint.

Leash in a sentence

• noun

  The park rules require every dog to be kept on a leash.

• verb

  Staff must leash all dogs near the playground.

• noun

  He clipped the leash to the collar before the walk.

• verb

  She had to leash her excitement until the results were confirmed.

Where does leash come from?

Language of origin: French

The word arrived in English around 1300 from the Old French laisse or lesse, which named a thong or cord used to hold a hound. That noun grew out of the verb laissier, meaning 'to let go' or 'to allow', which itself came from the Latin laxare, 'to loosen' or 'slacken', built on the adjective laxus, meaning 'loose'. The connection makes sense once you picture a hunting hound held on a slack cord and then let loose to run, so the same root that gives us 'lax' and 'relax' also gives us this word for a restraining strap. Over the centuries the spelling settled on the ea form that still trips writers, since the word is pronounced with a long ee sound that the letters ea do not obviously signal. The verb sense, meaning to put an animal on a leash or to restrain something, developed from the noun by the late nineteenth century.

How the word is built

• leash (single root, from Old French laisse: a cord for holding an animal)