Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A meadow.
  • noun An alcoholic beverage made from fermented honey and water.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A strong liquor made by mixing honey with water and flavoring it, yeast or some similar ferment being added, and the whole allowed to ferment.
  • noun A sweet drink charged with carbonic gas, and flavored with some syrup, as sarsaparilla.
  • noun Same as meadow: now chiefly used in poetry.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A fermented drink made of water and honey with malt, yeast, etc.; metheglin; hydromel.
  • noun United States A drink composed of sirup of sarsaparilla or other flavoring extract, and water. It is sometimes charged with carbonic acid gas.
  • noun A meadow.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun an alcoholic drink fermented from honey and water
  • noun poetic A meadow.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun United States philosopher of pragmatism (1863-1931)
  • noun made of fermented honey and water
  • noun United States anthropologist noted for her claims about adolescence and sexual behavior in Polynesian cultures (1901-1978)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English mede, from Old English mǣd; see mē- in Indo-European roots.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English meodu; see medhu- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English mede, from Old English medu, from Proto-Germanic *meduz, from Proto-Indo-European *médʰu ‘honey; honey wine’.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English mǣd. Cognate with West Frisian miede, Low German Meed, Mede.

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Examples

Comments

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  • 'A daisied mead' each said to each

    from 'Bucolics,' by Sylvia Plath

    April 9, 2008

  • ...morning mowers, who side by side slowly and seethingly advance their scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads...

    - Melville, Moby-Dick, ch. 58

    July 26, 2008

  • "A drink almost as old as history. The names derives from ancient words for honey." Takes a year and a day to make.

    October 8, 2008

  • Or is it only the breeze, in it listlessness

    Traveling across the wet mead to me here,

    You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,

    Heard no more again far or near?

    The Voice by Thomas Hardy

    February 24, 2013