lene

Anglicisation of Latin lēnis. Doublet of lenis.

• IPA^(key): /ˈliːn/
• Homophone: lean

lene (plural lenes)

1. (phonetics) The smooth breathing (spiritus lenis).
2. (phonetics) A voiceless, or unaspirated, stopped consonant, such as Greek pi, kappa, or tau.
   • 1861, William Edward Jelf, Accidence:

     When in a crasis, a lene consonant […] is combined with an aspirated vowel, the lene is always changed (except in the Ionic dialect) into the corresponding aspirate […]

• dagesh lene

• Leen, Neel, elne

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eːnə

lene

1. (dated or formal) singular present subjunctive of lenen

• leen

Learned borrowing from Latin lēnis, in substitution of the inherited form len (attested 13th century) which is preserved in the adverbial phrase ao len (“out in the open”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈlɛne̝/

lene m or f (plural lenes)

1. (literary) mild, gentle, soft

   Synonyms: maino, suave

   • c. 1300, R. Martínez López, editor, General Estoria. Versión gallega del siglo XIV, Oviedo: Publicacións de Archivum, page 280:

     Madre, sabes tu que Esau, meu yrmão he veloso et eu nõ, mays som lem, et se meu padre me apalpar et souber que sóóm eu, medo ey que coyde queo quis [excarnesçer], et em lugar de bendiçõ ey medo que me maldiga.

     Mother, you know that Esau, my brother, is hairy, but not me, I'm hairless; and if my father would touch me and find that it's me, I fear that he would think that I was mocking him, and instead of his blessing I would have his curse

• “lem” in Xavier Varela Barreiro & Xavier Gómez Guinovart: Corpus Xelmírez - Corpus lingüístico da Galicia medieval. SLI / Grupo TALG / ILG, 2006-2016.
• Antón Luís Santamarina Fernández, editor (2006–2013), “lene”, in Dicionario de Dicionarios da lingua galega [Dictionary of Dictionaries of the Galician language] (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega
• Antón Luís Santamarina Fernández, Ernesto Xosé González Seoane, María Álvarez de la Granja, editors (2003–2018), “lene”, in Tesouro informatizado da lingua galega (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega
• Rosario Álvarez Blanco, editor (2014–2024), “lene”, in Tesouro do léxico patrimonial galego e portugués (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega, →ISSN

Borrowed from Latin lēnis.

• IPA^(key): /ˈlɛ.ne/
• Rhymes: -ɛne
• Hyphenation: lè‧ne

lene m or f (plural leni) (literary)

1. mild, gentle, soft

   Synonyms: delicato, lieve, mite, soave

   Antonyms: aspro, brusco, forte, greve, pesante

2. (poetic) smooth
3. (phonetics) lenis

• lenemente

• lenità

• IPA^(key): /ˈle.ne/, /ˈlɛ.ne/^[1]
• Rhymes: -ene, -ɛne
• Hyphenation: lé‧ne, lè‧ne

lene f pl

1. plural of lena

• lene in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

From lēnis.

lēne (comparative lēnius, superlative lēnissimē)

1. softly, gently

   Synonym: lēniter

lēne

1. nominative/vocative/accusative singular neuter of lēnis

• “lene”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “lene”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• lene in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.

From German lehnen.

lene (imperative len, present tense lener, passive lenes, simple past lenet or lente, past participle lenet or lent, present participle lenende)

1. to lean

• armlene (of noun)

• “lene” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

• lena

From German lehnen.

lene

1. to lean

• armlene (of noun)

• “lene” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

Learned borrowing from Latin lēnis. (The expected native form would be *lem from Old Galician-Portuguese lẽe.)

• Hyphenation: le‧ne

lene m or f (plural lenes)

1. smooth, mild, gentle, soft

   Synonyms: brando, suave

Borrowed from Old Church Slavonic лѣнь (lěnĭ), from Proto-Slavic *lěnь. Compare Serbo-Croatian lijénōst, Russian лень (lenʹ), Polish leń. Cf also Aromanian leani.

• IPA^(key): /ˈle.ne/
• Rhymes: -ene
• Hyphenation: le‧ne

lene f (uncountable)

1. laziness, sloth, idleness, indolence

   Synonyms: indolență, trândăvie, lâncezeală, delăsare

   a îi fi lene ― to be lazy, not feel like

See leneș.

• “lene”, in DEX online—Dicționare ale limbii române (Dictionaries of the Romanian language) (in Romanian), 2004–2025

lene (Cyrillic spelling лене)

1. inflection of len:
   1. masculine accusative plural
   2. feminine genitive singular
   3. feminine nominative/accusative/vocative plural

From Latin lēnis.

• IPA^(key): /ˈlene/ [ˈle.ne]
• Rhymes: -ene
• Syllabification: le‧ne

lene m or f (masculine and feminine plural lenes)

1. (obsolete) soft
2. (obsolete) sweet
3. (obsolete) light

• “lene”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 10 December 2024

lene

1. definite natural masculine singular of len

• elen