Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A plot of land belonging or yielding profit to an English parish church or an ecclesiastical office.
- n. Archaic The soil or earth; land.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. I. A lump; a mass or concretion.
- n. In mineralogy, a piece of earth in which is contained some mineral ore.
- n. Turf; soil; ground; farming-land.
- n. Now, specifically, the cultivable land belonging to a parish church or ecclesiastical benefice. Also glebe-land.
Wiktionary
- n. Turf; soil; ground; sod.
- n. historical In medieval Europe, an area of land, belonging to a parish, whose revenues contributed towards the parish expenses.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A lump; a clod.
- n. Turf; soil; ground; sod.
- n. (Eccl. Law) The land belonging, or yielding revenue, to a parish church or ecclesiastical benefice.
WordNet 3.0
- n. plot of land belonging to an English parish church or an ecclesiastical office
Etymologies
- From Latin glēba "lump of earth, a clod". (Wiktionary)
- Latin glēba, clod. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Their incomes are supplemented by a small glebe, which is attached to each”
Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge
“In a real sense, what the village shared with the rectory and the glebe was a boundary.”
“He was supported partly by the produce of the "glebe," or land belonging to the parish church, partly by tithe, a tax estimated at one-tenth of the income of each man's land, partly by the offerings of the people.”
An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England
“This roused truly frightening images in my mind until I looked up glebe.”
“The Commonwealth stripped the church of the glebe lands and permitted the local parishes to align as they saw fit.”
“Add to all these changes, that the garden was weeded, and the glebe was regularly laboured.”
“Needs must we now without delay pass this word along the line "Arm, arm! from slumber cease!" for many a man of them, e'en as he leaps aboard his ship, shall be smitten through the back and sprinkle the ladders with blood, and others shall be fast bound with cords and learn to till our Phrygian glebe.”
“And at break of day I will drive my steers to my glebe and sow my crop.”
“The door opened upon a wide lawn, bounded by the glebe and orchard.”
“The glebe was littered with mangled fusilages and blackened wings.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘glebe’.
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*e?e
Words whose last and third-to-last letters are both "e".
here, eke, were, complete, mete, replete, adhere, where, mere, sphere, austere, aesthete and 99 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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phrontistery - g
from phrontistery.info
gabardine, gabbart, gabble, gabbro, gabelle, gabion, gablock, gad, gadarene, gadoid, gadroon, gadzookery and 439 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV
Words from the songs of Frank Black, a.k.a. Black Francis
zugzwang, valhalla, montalvo, ishist, tritons, mosh, siam, llano del rio, protohuman, tumbleweeds, ludwigshafen, ballyhoos and 349 more...
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Most Obscure Words
acatalectic, acosmism, acuate, acuminate, adscititious, adytum, akratisma, alieniloquy, allelomorph, allochiria, allodium, alnage and 620 more...
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Browning words of cotton - often stic...
words that meander or have a partial dimension:
words that "catch on": peano curves: fractalitescotton, clue, filament, filaria, filum, filovirus, clod, cloud, peano curve, alveoli, nuance, noil and 122 more...
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Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes
Words I had to look up, or I liked, from Robert Louis Stevenson's travelogue 'Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes'.
pediment, drugget, raiment, scurrilous, stripling, distaff, calumniate, valise, stolid, appurtenance, spencer, vaticination and 42 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, G
grocer, gabanergic, gabardine, gabbro, gaffe, gneiss, grapple, grosgrain, grommet, gratify, gossamer, goofy and 194 more...
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colleen's words ii
sibilant, sundry, spindle, distaff, device, mortar, pestle, scythe, flail, thresh, frown, elementary and 495 more...
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traipsin' 'long through dis 'ear book...
Words which are either entirely new to me or;
Words which I comprehend generally but would prefer a more precise definition.
venality, seigneurial, mendicant, perforce, manse, glebe, trenchant, saw, obstreperous, profligate, dissipation, galliard and 176 more...
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Tuesday words
just the next words that come along
nasality, transignification, lapsarian, disciple, slanguage, atwitter, avast, ahoy, asleep, awake, hymnody, glissade and 573 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
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19 c.
some of the interesting words i've had to look up while reading 19th century lit
maugre, connate, alembic, azote, vaticination, valetudinarian, dight, scutcheon, lammergeyer, chamois, asseverate, prebendary and 199 more...
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Keepers
Collected words.
emulous, viand, gymnosophist, sublunary, flibbertigibbet, jeremiad, bastinado, ambuscade, syllogism, peccadillo, hecatomb, mendicant and 78 more...
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Words that make you go hmmmm...
Interesting words you probably won't hear in your day-to-day.
maxwell, mooncalf, quagga, glaikit, musquash, lingam, haruspex, qindarka, chthonic, ipomoea, azimuthal, valuta and 304 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for glebe.

blafferty a. A tract of land containing mineral deposits or ore. b. Obsolete term for a clod of earth, an ore, or an earthy mineral. Arkell
(Dictionary of Mining, Mineral, and Related Terms) Jun 10, 2011
jaime_d From Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution Mar 6, 2011
bilby
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield;
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
- T. Gray, 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'. Aug 11, 2008
plethora So I'm not completely delusional after all. How reassuring. Apr 16, 2008
kewpid It most certainly was set in Glebe. They also filmed it there. Apr 16, 2008
plethora Hmm, I wonder where I got that from, then. I've spent less than 12 hours in Sydney, when I was ten; I have no knowledge of its geography. Apr 16, 2008
bilby I just picture inner-city Sydney, not Glebe in particular ... might have been Balmain after all! I've met Melina Marchetta and talked to her about this book and I didn't have Glebe in my head after that conversation either. Apr 16, 2008
plethora This always brings to mind Looking for Alibrandi. That's where she lived isn't it? Anyone care to correct me? Apr 16, 2008
frindley Sydney has an inner-city suburb called Glebe. In Hobart there's an area of the city (not sure if it's strictly a suburb) that's still known as The Glebe. Presumably both were actual parish glebes at some point. Apr 16, 2008
kewpid I had always assumed this was just somebody's name. The actual etymology is much more interesting. Sep 22, 2007
fbharjo glebe - etymologically similar to galilee Apr 8, 2007