lede

Or lead

[leed]

noun

1. Journalism.

   1. a short summary serving as an introduction to a news story, article, or other copy.

   2. the main and often most important news story.

Word History and Origins

Origin of lede¹

First recorded in 1950–55; altered spelling of lead ¹ ( def. ) (in the journalism sense “short introductory summary”), used in the printing trades to distinguish it from the homograph lead ² ( def. ) (in the sense “thin strip of type metal for increasing the space between lines of type”)

Example Sentences

The headlines from the Federal Open Market Committee’s policy-decision meeting this coming week will, to use journalists’ jargon, likely bury the lede.

Read more on Barron's

You can’t accuse those who title “NOVA” episodes of burying the lede with “Ancient Desert Death Trap.”

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

And then he said, “But I’m in love with you. How about that? I buried the lede.”

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Five years ago, that was the tortured lede of the column that was published in the immediate wake of Bryant’s death.

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Amnesty’s report, titled “ ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza,” buried the lede, as journalists say.

Read more on Los Angeles Times