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say it: led
lead is a noun and verb meaning "an advantage held by a competitor in a race". It is pronounced /ˈlɛd/ — led. It carries 31 recorded senses.
a soft heavy toxic malleable metallic element; bluish white when freshly cut but tarnishes readily to dull grey
“the children were playing with lead soldiers”
a position of being the initiator of something and an example that others will follow (especially in the phrase `take the lead')
“he takes the lead in any group”
“we were just waiting for someone to take the lead”
“they didn't follow our lead”
the angle between the direction a gun is aimed and the position of a moving target (correcting for the flight time of the missile)
the introductory section of a story
“it was an amusing lead-in to a very serious matter”
(baseball) the position taken by a base runner preparing to advance to the next base
“he took a long lead off first”
baseball
a news story of major importance
the timing of ignition relative to the position of the piston in an internal-combustion engine
mixture of graphite with clay in different degrees of hardness; the marking substance in a pencil
a jumper that consists of a short piece of wire
“it was a tangle of jumper cables and clip leads”
tend to or result in
“This remark lead to further arguments among the guests”
stretch out over a distance, space, time, or scope; run or extend between two points or beyond a certain point
“Service runs all the way to Cranbury”
“His knowledge doesn't go very far”
“My memory extends back to my fourth year of life”
“The facts extend beyond a consideration of her personal assets”
be conducive to
“The use of computers in the classroom lead to better writing”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for lead come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.