lea \lee, ley\,
noun:
1. a tract of open ground, especially grassland; meadow.
2. land used for a few years for pasture or for growing hay, then plowed over and replaced by another crop.
3. a crop of hay on tillable land.
adjective:
1. untilled; fallow.
Now dance the lights on lawn and lea / The flocks are whiter down the vale / And milkier every milky sail / On winding stream or distant sea…
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson, "In Memoriam A.H.H.," 1849
…and there were the scrubby bushes in the lea of the hill, and there was the winding gravel road that meandered over to the next valley.
-- Brad Leithauser, "The Friends of Freeland," 1997
Lea comes from the Old English word lea which referred to a plot of land. It likely came from the Latin word lūcus which meant "grove."
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