Obs. [repr. OE. (weʓa) ʓelǽte = OHG. kalâȥ (dero wego) junction (of roads):—OTeut. type *galǣtjom, f. *ga- together + *lǣt-: see LET v.1
A form releet given in the East Anglian glossaries is due to a wrong division of threer elect, four-elect, repr. OE. *þréora ʓelǽte, *féower-ʓelǽte. (See Skeat in Academy, March (1878), 190.)]
A meeting of the ways, a cross-way; only in two-, three-, four-way leet.
c. 1000. Ags. Gosp., Matt. xxii. 9. Gað nu witodlice to weʓa ʓelætum.]
1603. Harsnet, Popish Imposture, 134. Our children, old women, and maides afraid to crosse a Churchyeard, or a three-way leet.
1608. Golding, Epit. Frossard, II. 95. Arriuing at a three-way leete, and consulting among themselues which way was to be taken.
1618. Bolton, Florus, I. ix. (1636), 24. Situated in the middest, betweene Latium and Tuscanie, as it were in a two-way-leet.
1656. W. D., trans., Comenius’ Gate Lat. Unl., § 923. 289. There are four principal ones—the Heathenish, Jewish, Christian, Mahometan—of which scrupulous four-way-leet, to take an Historical short delineation.
1674–91. Ray, S. & E. C. Words, 105. A Three or four-way Leet,… where three or four ways meet.
