You Should Know @lemmy.world bobbyfiend @lemmy.ml 12 mo. ago

YSK the difference between lead and led (and similar-sounding/looking words)

This drives me nuts when I see it done wrong, but it's actually kind of complicated because English is orthographically deranged.

Lead (/liːd/) [verb, present tense]: to guide, etc. I asked them to lead us in a rousing revolutionary anthem.

Led (/led/) [verb, past tense]: as above, but past tense. Later, we were led to a blank concrete wall.

Lead (/led/) [noun]: A soft, poisonous metal. Bullets are most often made of lead.

Just to make it confusing...

Lead (/liːd/) [noun]: kind of like "leader". Officer Johnson was our lead on this operation. (Note: it also means "leash"; e.g., I clipped the lead to Bowser's collar.)

Lede (/liːd/) [noun]: The first bit of a news story, often the first sentence. I didn't read the full article, but the lede suggested the protesters were decimated by police.

Leeds [proper noun]: A Town in England. Leeds is the worst place to stage peaceful protests.

And finally...

LED (ell ee dee) [noun, abbr.]: Abbreviation for light-emitting diode. For the love of any gods you might believe in, fucking capitalize it. Electronics hobbyists I'm looking in your direction.

More Examples

Wrong: I was lead into the woods by a stranger.
Right: I was led into the woods by a stranger.
Wrong: The lead in an ad about cheap bulk led lead me to lede my leed dog to Leides on her led lede.
Right: The lede in an ad about cheap bulk lead led me to lead my lead dog to Leeds on her LED lead.

(The last example is stupidly confusing, but it was fun to write.)

44 comments

"Well ackshually ..."

You forgot one, lead as in cord.

Examples:

jumper leads

extension leads
- 🤓☝
- You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.
- Very common in UK / Australia but almost never heard in the US (we usually say cables instead).
  
  ... but you're aware that the majority of the world is not in fact in the US.
  
  Common among the electronics hobbyists that OP mentioned as well, leads are what you call the connections to discrete components or IC's.
- Ledes: leads led the lead leads to LEDs in Leeds.
  
  Pronounced:
  
  the leeds: leeds led the led leeds to leds in leeds
  
  Translation:
  
  multiple headlines said he followed his bosses with soft metal wires to connect some energy efficient lights in the worst place to stage a protest.
Don’t forget that “lead” rhymes with “read” and “lead” rhymes with “read”, but “lead” doesn’t rhyme with “read” and “lead” doesn’t rhyme with “read”.
One of my biggest nitpicks is lie vs lay

Lie Lay

I usually lie on the bed. Lay down your weapon.

Yesterday, I lay on the bed. He laid his weapon down.
- "lie" has two meanings too...
  
  "But Dave lied when he said he lay on his bed."
  
  Same word, different meanings, different tenses
  
  It too takes two to tango.
Thank you for making the community 100% more literate with this post
Where does this leave Led Zeppelin? Am I guiding said Zeppelin somewhere?
- IIRC someone told them that their band would fall and crash like a Lead (the metal) Balloon. They changed it from Lead to Led and had their name
  
  Bonus story: Daft Punk got their name in a similar manner. A critic described their music as "dafty punk"
- You're leading a zeppelin full of lead.
Your first example isn't actually using the present tense, it is using the infinitive form "to lead".
Justice for Leeds!

(It's a city not a town)
- Leeds Leeds Leeds!
Your example for lede should reference burying the lede as that’s most often when I see people using it wrong
I think the main source of confusion in this actually comes down to the conjugation of read.

Read and lead should be conjugated the same, but they aren't. Add to that all the additional homophones and homonyms and yeah. I wouldn't jump on anyone for screwing this up.
In French there is a similar word: ver/vers/vair/verre, all of these are pronounced the same

Ver(s): worm(s) Vers: it can either means "towards", "around" or if it's use as a noun it means a "verse" in poetry. Verre: glass Vair : a fur used in medieval time.

Fun fact: in the original Cinderella story she was wearing fur slippers (vair). However with time and oral transmission of the story the fur become glass (vair -> Verre)
Now do one about theiry're please.
Or for the audio version, it is read like lead and not read like lead.
This is why I love English. In Spanish every use case has a different word, eliminating the confusion. Reminds me of the phrase "John while James had had had..."
- James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher
  
  I think I had a stroke reading that
  
  It's a good example of why punctuation is helpful.
  
  James, while John had had "had had", had had "had"; "had had" had had a better effect on the teacher
Homophones and Homographs!
- "What are, two words that will offend your backwards uncle at Thanksgiving?"
  
  Nice. I miss Alex.
Not to brag by any means, but english isn't my first language I knew all of the above.
- It's one of those things. Common errors are sometimes specific to native or to second-language speakers.
  
  Quite often, in written Spanish, you'll see b/v errors from native Spanish speakers, but never from English speakers (because the sounds are different in English). We're far more likely to confuse vowels, diacritical marks, and conjugation.
- Here's a dirty secret: your parents are terrible teachers of a language compared to, perhaps, teachers, for the same reason your parents are probably the worst people to teach you how to drive: they don't or can't correct all our mistakes, and in doing so fail to preserve a consistent baseline like a proper curriculum does.
  
  People who speak English having learned from a teacher are likely the best speakers of English that we will ever encounter.
I feel like native speakers should read this, they are the number one transgressor when it comes to their/there/they're and other similar sounding words (homonyms?), as well as "payed" and other creative transcriptions.

for the rest of us it's damn near impossible to mix these up.

edit: I kinda sound like an asshole; wasn't meant to be "I'm better than you" (add than/then to the list), more like "here's my perspective", no offense was intended.
- This one's tricky. The comma splice in the first sentence is jarring, but recently people seem to absolutely love them despite being wrong. And let's not linger too long on the 'damn' which should be 'damned'.
  
  I'm not saying it's imperfect: I'm saying if you miss what I find obvious, maybe their miss of what you find obvious could be easier to understand.
  
  For me, aside from 'emails', and the 'nounification' of nouns like 'ask', 'spend', and 'verbification' of 'effort' -- effort the ask to reduce the spend, Dave -- I have a general worry that we're marching towards Idiocracy because LaNgUaGeEvOlVeS and it seems a Parisian-style language police is strongly indicated.
Wrong: I was lead into the woods by a stranger.

Double-check with proper English. Get ready for learning.

But led/lead isn't the big issue, is it? We have people who learned about words like 'traffic' and 'mail' and still put an s on the end of 'email' like an absolute git.

Let's tackle led/lead after we are done spiritually crushing the 'emails' idiots, and those who confuse that/which/whom/who, and the if/whether idiots. Effect/affect and there/their/they're are excellent early goals to achieve too before we go for the more nuanced stuff.
Leeds is a city in Yorkshire. i.e. it's a shit'ole
If you found a clue, is that a lead or a lede?
- A lead, as in something that leads you to the next step in the investigation.
- Depends on if you found it at the beginning of a newspaper article or not.
How about lid?