''glade'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260915190735-00-⌔

glade - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

glade (plural glades)

• An open passage through a wood; a grassy open or cleared space in a forest.
  • ✤ Synonym: clearing
  • ✤ Coordinate terms: meadow, leigh, ley, lea
  • ✤ […] are creating more “glades,” or cleared trails through the woods, for less experienced (blue) skiers. They’re a throwback to the first days of skiing, before resorts cut wide swaths of trees, and machines rolled and packed the snow.¹
  • ✤ […] and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer.²
• (colloquial) An everglade.
• An open space in the ice on a river or lake.
• A bright surface of ice or snow.
  • ✤ a glade of ice
• (obsolete) A gleam of light.
• (obsolete) A bright patch of sky; the bright space between clouds.

Etymology

From Middle English glade, glode, glede (“a gleam of light, bright space, an open space; an open or cleared space in a forest; a bright patch of sky; a bright surface of snow or ice”), of uncertain origin, perhaps from Old English ﹡glǣd, ﹡glād, related to Old English glæd (“shining, bright”), (compare Old Norse glaðr (“bright”)).³

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ɡleɪd/
• Audio (Southern England): 🔊
• Rhymes: -eɪd

Printed 2026-09-15.

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Footnotes

1. 2003 November 23, Newsweek, Travel, In The Trees ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩

2. 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 22”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC: ↩

3. Douglas Harper (2001–2026), “glade”, in Online Etymology Dictionary. ↩