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mease

noun

Etymology

The English Dialect Dictionary suggests Old Norse meiss (“wooden box, as would be used for counting fish”) as a source; The Century Dictionary suggests that the term comes via Old French from a Latin word *mesa (“barrel”). One can also compare German Mass (“measure”) and indeed measure itself.

  1. derived from meiss

Definitions

  1. A measure of varying quantity, often five or six (long or short) hundred, used especially…

    A measure of varying quantity, often five or six (long or short) hundred, used especially when counting herring.

    • a mease of herrings
    • During the past few days large quantities of herrings have been caught at Clovelly. One fisherman, James Small, brought in about twenty mease (mease, 600). The prices realised have fallen so low as 5s. per mease.

  2. A mess, a mese

    A mess, a mese: a meal.

    • I want my mease of milk when I go to my work.
    • they shal have [...] every mease of two dishes, one with pottage & boiled meate, the other roste (if it be no fasting day.) And if it be a fish daye, then they shal have two like meases of white meate & fish.

  3. A dwelling or messuage.

    • 1628, July 15, was a Gild new erected by four young bachelors of the town, and kept at the college-house, of above twenty meases of persons, and the poor then well relieved.
    • William Raynshaw, of Hulme, in the county of Lancaster, complains that whereas Hamnett Bent was seised in his demesne as of fee of certain meases of land, meadow, and pasture with appurtenances in Hulme […]
  4. ›+ 3 more definitions

    1. Obsolete spelling of mesh (of a fishing net).

    2. To catch or enmesh (fish) by the head in a seine.

      • ( […] and except also fish meased in the sleeves of certain nets, called seynes), of which no tithes are demanded; […]
      • […] except only such fish as have been used for bate to catch other fish, and also fish meased (or caught by the head) in the sleeves of certain nets called saynes.

    3. A surname.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for mease. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA