Glebe

//ɡliːb// name, noun

name, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Turf; soil; ground; sod.

    "1768, Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke"

  2. 2
    plot of land belonging to an English parish church or an ecclesiastical office wordnet
  3. 3
    In medieval Europe, an area of land, belonging to a parish, whose revenues contributed towards the parish expenses. historical
  4. 4
    A field or meadow. poetic

    "Admiring glebes their amber ears unfold, / And Labour sleep amid the waving gold."

  5. 5
    A piece of earth containing ore.
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A suburb of Sydney in the Sydney council area, New South Wales, Australia.
  2. 2
    A suburb of the City of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.

Synonyms

All synonyms
earthacresalluviumcare of soulschargechurch house

Example

More examples

"1768, Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke"

Etymology

From Old French glebe, from Latin glaeba (“lump of earth, clod”). Doublet of gleba.

Related phrases

glebe farmglebe-farmglebe-houseglebe-land

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.