leader

Etymology

From Middle English leder, ledere, from Old English lǣdere (“leader”), equivalent to lead + -er. Cognate with Scots ledar, leidar (“leader”), West Frisian lieder (“leader”), Dutch leider (“leader”), German Leiter (“leader, conductor, manager”), Danish leder (“leader, manager”), Swedish ledare (“leader, conductor, director”), Icelandic leiðari (“leader, conductor”).

noun

1. Any person who leads or directs.
   1. One who goes first.
      Follow the leader.
   2. One having authority to direct.
      We elected her team leader.
      America needs not only an administrator, but a leader - a pathfinder, a blazer of the trail to the high road that will avoid the bottomless morass of crass materialism that has engulfed so many of the great civilizations of the past. 1928, Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Happy Warrior Alfred E. Smith, Houghton Mifflin, →OCLC, →OL, page 40
      On the other hand, I must think of Korea and, particularly, of the three million enslaved Koreans in the North. My obligation as a leader of the Korean people is to achieve unification of our country by peaceful means if possible but by force if necessary. 1978, Richard Nixon, quoting Syngman Rhee, RN: the Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Grosset & Dunlap, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 127
      The leader is the man who knows the way of the overlords but identifies with the life of the oppressed. 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 195
   3. One who leads a political party or group of elected party members; sometimes used in titles.
      Leader of the House of Commons
      Senate Majority Leader
   4. A person or organization that leads in a certain field in terms of excellence, success, etc.
      The company is the leader in home remodeling in the county.
   5. (music) A performer who leads a band, choir, or a section of an orchestra.
   6. (music, UK) The first violin in a symphony orchestra; the concertmaster.
2. An animal that leads.
   1. The dominant animal in a pack of animals, such as wolves or lions.
      The gesture of licking and nipping a leader's muzzle is similar to the food-begging behavior of wolf pups and may be related to it. 1987, Sylvia A. Johnson, Alice Aamodt, Wolf Pack: Tracking Wolves in the Wild, page 41
   2. an animal placed in advance of others, especially on a team of horse, oxen, or dogs
      Still there are many passages in his [Donne's] writings, where it is plain that he forgot to pull in his leaders; and they gallop away with him at times over hill and dale, over ploughed land and waste. 1846, Julius Charles Hare, “On the Comforter's conviction of Righteousness”, in The mission of the Comforter, and other sermons with Notes
   3. Either of the two front horses of a team of four in front of a carriage.
3. Someone or something that leads or conducts.
   1. (botany) A fast-growing terminal shoot of a woody plant.
      A strong central leader may result in essentially horizontal branches resembling a "telephone pole." 1975, David J. De Laubenfels, Mapping the world's vegetation: regionalization of formations and flora, page 82
   2. A pipe for conducting rain water from a roof to a cistern or to the ground.
   3. (UK, journalism) The first, or the principal, editorial article in a newspaper; a leading or main editorial article; a lead story.
   4. (fishing) A section of line between the main fishing line and the snell of a hook, intended to be more resistant to bites and harder for a fish to detect than the main fishing line.
   5. (film, printing) A piece of material at the beginning or end of a reel or roll to allow the material to be threaded or fed onto something, as a reel of film onto a projector or a roll of paper onto a rotary printing press.
      If you need to reload film, the cassette can be rewound slightly by turning the hub located on one end of its spool. Do not rewind so much that the leader disappears into the cassette. 2011, Rebekah Modrak, Bill Anthes, Reframing Photography: Theory and Practice
   6. (cinematography, dated) An intertitle.
      The leader only runs three seconds, but it acts like a drop curtain in a theater. 1913, Epes Winthrop Sargent, The Technique of the Photoplay, New York, page 15
   7. (marketing) A loss leader or a popular product sold at a normal price.
   8. (printing) A type having a dot or short row of dots upon its face.
   9. (printing, in the plural) A row of dots, periods, or hyphens, used in tables of contents, etc., to lead the eye across a space to the right word or number.
   10. (fishing) A net for leading fish into a pound, weir, etc.
       when two wheels geer together, the one which communicates the motion to the other is called the driver or leader; and the wheel impelled is the follower 1852, D. Gilbert, “Geering”, in Appleton's dictionary of machines, mechanics, engine-work, and engineering, page 786
   11. (mining) A branch or small vein, not important in itself, but indicating the proximity of a better one.
   12. (nautical) A block of hard wood pierced with suitable holes for leading ropes in their proper places.
   13. (engineering) The drive wheel in any kind of machinery.
   14. (meteorology) The path taken by electrons from a cloud to ground level, determining the shape of a bolt of lightning.