[f. SUB- 9 (b) + LET v.1] trans. To let (property, a tenement) to a subtenant; to lease out (work, etc.) under a subcontract; to underlet, sublease.
1766. Smollett, Trav., xxxix. II. 223. My landlord … declared I should not be permitted to sub-let them to any other person.
1791. Newte, Tour Eng. & Scot., 124. The Chieftain … lets the land … to renters; who sub-let it, again, in small parcels from year to year, to the lower class of the people.
1860. All Year Round, No. 68. 427. This man employs the needlewomen, or perhaps sublets part of his contract to others who employ them.
1865. Q. Rev., July, 31. Poulterers of Edinburgh and Glasgow rent ground, subletting the shooting, and furnishing the shops with the produce.
1871. Amy Dutton, Streets & Lanes, i. 11. That house was occupied by a couple named Cripps, hard, griping people, who sublet most of the rooms.
1890. O. Thanet, in Century Mag., June, 221/1. He ’s let and sublet, and every man has to make something out of him [the convict] each time.
absol. 1872–4. Jefferies, Toilers of Field (1892), 242. He sub-lets, or takes lodgers, and sometimes these sub-let.
Hence Sublettable a., Subletter, Subletting vbl. sb.
1869. Pall Mall Gaz., 1 Sept., 3. It is, of course, to be saleable and devisable. Is it not also to be *subletable?
1861. Mayhew, Lond. Labour, II. 230. The *sub-lettors declaring … that the rents were raised to them.
1812. Sir J. Sinclair, Syst. Husb. Scot., II. 108. The *subletting of land.
1826. Bell, Comm. Laws Scot. (ed. 5), I. 77. The right … of subletting.
1854. McCulloch, Acc. Brit. Empire, I. 537. The legislature passed the Subletting Act, by which the underletting of farms was prohibited without the landlord’s consent in writing.
1888. Times (weekly ed.), 11 May, 15/2. He had known three or four sublettings before the work reached the workman.
