rithe Now dial.
(raɪθ)
Also 8–9 ride, 9 rife.
[OE. r{iacu}ð, r{iacu}ðe, = Fris. ryd, ride, MLG. rîd, rîde, etc. (LG. rîde), OLFrankish rîth stream, ditch.]
A small stream; a brooklet.
| c 888 K. ælfred Boeth. xxxiv. §1 Sum micel æwelm..& irnen mæneᵹe brocas & riða of. c 897 ― Gregory's Past. C. 469 Sume hine lætað ofer landscare riðum torinnan. c 1000 ælfric Numb. xvi. 14 To þam lande, þe eall flewð on riðum meolce & hunies. [c 1200 Vices & Virtues 95 Ðo teares ðe comen ierninde from ðare well-riðe of rewnesse.] |
| 1787 Grose Prov. Gloss., Ride, a little stream. 1868 Hurst Horsham Gloss., Rythe, a small stream, usually one occasioned by heavy rain. 1925 A. Moore Last Days of Mast & Sail vii. 216 [The Bosham boats] are most dangerous-looking and would not live long in a seaway, but in the channels and rithes of Chichester Harbour the water is generally smooth and they continue in use generation after generation. 1931 Belloc Cranmer ii. 21 There stood on the Eastern edge of the town of Cambridge, just beyond the King's Ditch, as it was called (a runnel of water, the Long Rithe, which drained that flooded land and led from a mill above), a little place already known in this year, 1503, as ‘Jesus’ College. |