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From Middle Englishlede, leode(“man; human being, person; lord, prince; God; sir; group, kind; race; a people, nation; human race; land, real property”),[1] from three closely related words:
Old Englishlēod(“man; chief, leader; (poetic) prince; a people, people group; nation”);
Sweet, yes sweet is over (beyond) measure / The marrying for the young lede (people); / Most sweet it is, I say yet (once more), / When it goes with the rede (counsel) of the elders.
A translation of part of the first stanza of a song composed c. 1650 by the West Frisian poet Gysbert Japiks (1603–1666): “Swíet, ja swíet is 't, oer 'e míete / 'T Boáskien fóar 'e jonge lie; / Kreftich swíet is 't, sizz' ik jíette, / As it giet mei âlders ríe.”
c.1870s, “Transition English: From the Conquest to Chaucer.—a.d. 1066 to a.d. 1352 [Sir Cleges.]”, in Henry Morley, editor, Shorter English Poems (Cassell’s Library of English Literature), London, Paris: Cassell & Company,, →OCLC, page 28, column 2, lines 409–412:
Gramércy, liegé King, / This is to me a comforting: / I tell you sickerly / For to have land or lede / Or other riches, so God me speed, / It is too much for me.
Spelling modernized by the editor from a late-14th – early-15th-century text.
Usage notes
In modern English, the word is only found as a conscious archaism.
The lede of this article is its firstparagraph, which says, “One of the greatest sensations in Whitman county was caused yesterday afternoon when Sheriff Canutt arrested Dr. T. D. Ferguson upon a charge of manslaughter. The information says that Dr. Ferguson committed the crime on April 21, 1904, ‘by unlawfully, willfully and feloniously slaying and killing one Agnes R. Downs.’” The hed (i.e., the headline, using a similarly misspelled form) says, “A prominent physician is charged with manslaughter”.
A deliberate misspelling of lead, originally used in instructions given to printers to indicate which paragraphs constitute the lede, intended to avoid confusion with the word lead which may actually appear in the text of an article.[3][4] Compare dek(“subhead”) (modified from deck) and hed(“headline”) (from head).
1979, J. W. Click, Russell N. Baird, Magazine Editing and Production, 2nd edition, Dubuque, Iowa: W C. Brown, →ISBN, page 90:
Readers usually see the lead picture and read its caption first, before reading the lede of the article, so the article lede should not be a repetition of the caption.
1999, Mike Godwin, “Who’s a Journalist?—II: Welcome the New Journalists on the Internet”, in Robert H. Giles, Robert W. Snyder, editors, What’s Next?: Problems & Prospects of Journalism, New Brunswick, N.J., London: Transaction Publishers, published 2001, →ISBN, page 46:
"How can Mr. On-line Guy learn to be a journalist if he didn't go through what I went through?" they [newspaper journalists] ask. "I needed the city editor to tell me how to write a graceful sentence, and I was a year into the job before I could craft a decent lede?"
I was thrilled to be in possession of this nugget, which could probably take over the lede of my story. This essentially and truly implicated one of the most respected homicide detectives in Boston, all based on my initial tip.
The lede (as we spell it) story in today's NYT [The New York Times] is all about their new poll showing that McCain is hurting himself, not Obama, with the attacks. […] If something's the lede in the NYT, it tends to get discussed on cable TV all day, etc.
2018, Branden Salas, “Reporting for Print Media”, in Basic Concept of Journalism, Waltham Abbey, Essex: Ed-Tech Press, published 2020, →ISBN, page 253:
Like all forms of writing, there's no hard and fast rule about what makes a great lede. A good lede changes depending on the story you're writing. […]Ledes vary wildly, but you'll start to notice patterns and, more importantly, what kinds of ledes you like and feel are effective.
2019, Naveed Saleh, “Narrative: Beginnings, Middles, and Ends”, in The Writer’s Guide to Self-editing: Essential Tips for Online and Print Publishing, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, →ISBN, part VII (Global Considerations), page 225:
Here are some different types of ledes: […] · Scenario ledes use narrative elements to describe a place of particular importance to the story. / · Narrative ledes begin at a chronological beginning. […] · First-person anecdotal ledes begin with a relevant anecdote that involves the writer. Service and celebrity pieces often begin with first-person ledes.
Usage notes
The word, which has entered ordinary usage, was originally journalistic jargon. In 1990, the American author and journalist William Safire (1929–2009) was still able to say: “You will not find this spelling in dictionaries; it is still an insiders' variant, steadily growing in frequency of use. Will lede break out of its insider status and find its way into general use? To suggest this is becoming standard would be misledeing But it has earned its place as a variant spelling, soon to overtake the original spelling for the beginning of a news article.”[5]
^ Alternatively, it has been claimed that the word was misspelled to avoid confusion with lead(“strip of type metal used for positioning type in the frame”) (pronounced /lɛd/): see “The Maven’s Word of the Day: lede”, in Random House, 2000 November 28, archived from the original on 17 April 2001.
, Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2020.
lead paragraph on Wikipedia.Wikipedia 