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''mead'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260120231423-00-⌔

mead - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

mead (usually uncountable, plural meads)

  • (alcoholic beverages) An alcoholic drink fermented from honey and water.
    • ✤ “Just come in,” said Mrs. Churchill, “and take one glass of my mead.”/“No—not even such a golden promise tempts me. I am afraid that Lord Marchmont will be at home before me—and he is not yet accustomed to be kept waiting.”1
    • ✤ No one, then or now, wanted to drink the mead that came out of Odin’s arse.2
  • (US) A drink composed of syrup of sarsaparilla or other flavouring extract, and water, and sometimes charged with carbon dioxide.

Noun

mead (plural meads)

  • (poetic) A meadow.
    • ✤ And then in haste her bow’r she leaves,
      With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
      Or if the earlier season lead
      To the tann’d haycock in the mead.      3
    • ✤ Farewel ye crystal streams, that pass
      Thro’ fragrant meads of verdant grass:      4
    • ✤ Hither, hither, love —
      ‘Tis a shady mead —
      Hither, hither, love!
      Let us feed and feed!      5
    • ✤ But any man that walks the mead,
      In bud, or blade, or bloom, may find,
      According as his humours lead,
      A meaning suited to his mind.      6
    • ✤ Four voices of four hamlets round,
      From far and near, on mead and moor,
      Swell out and fail, as if a door
      Were shut between me and the sound […]      7
    • ✤ ‘We must overhaul that mead,’ he resumed; ‘this mustn’t continny!’8
    • ✤ There ran little streams over bright pebbles, dividing meads of green and gardens of many hues, […].9

Pronunciation

  • enPR: mēd, IPA: /miːd/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -iːd
  • Homophone: meed

Etymology 1

From Middle English mede, from Old English medu, from Proto-West Germanic ﹡medu, from Proto-Germanic ﹡meduz, from Proto-Indo-European ﹡médʰu (“honey; honey wine”).

Cognate with Ancient Greek μέθυ (méthu) (whence English methyl), Lithuanian medùs, Old Church Slavonic медъ (medŭ, “honey”), Persian می (mey), Sanskrit मधु (mádhu), Welsh medd, Finnish mesi, Chinese 蜜 (mì).

Etymology 2

From Middle English mede (“meadow”), from Old English mǣd. Cognate with West Frisian miede, Mede, German Low German Meed, Dutch made.

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter IV, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 47: ↩

  2. 2017, Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology, Bloomsbury Publishing, page 131: ↩

  3. 1645, John Milton, L’Allegro ‎: ↩

  4. a. 1722, Matthew Prior, “Dorinda”, in H. Bunker Wright, Monroe K. Spears, editors, The Literary Works of Matthew Prior, Second edition, volume I, Oxford: Clarendon Press, published 1971, page 693: ↩

  5. c. 1817, John Keats, Hither, hither, love -: ↩

  6. 1842, Alfred Tennyson, “The Day-Dream. Moral.”, in Poems. […], volume II, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 160: ↩

  7. 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XXVIII”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 45: ↩

  8. 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volume, London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], →OCLC: ↩

  9. 1920, H. P. Lovecraft, The Doom that Came to Sarnath: ↩