mease

noun

1. (UK, dated, dialectal)A measure of varying quantity, often five or six (long or short) hundred, used especially when counting herring.

   “a mease of herrings”

   “The weekly returns will show a great falling off in the herring fishing which it may be said was a complete failure—and consequently caused a falling off of the revenues of the Harbour. There were only 521 mease of herrings sold at an average price of £1 2s 7¾d., or total £590.”

   “During the past few days large quantities of herrings have been caught at Clovelly. One fisherman, James Small, brought in about twenty mease (mease, 600). The prices realised have fallen so low as 5s. per mease.”

   “At Portavogie a few mease of herring were landed in June by some twenty-five boats.”

2. (obsolete)A mess, a mese: a meal.

   “I want my mease of milk when I go to my work.”

   “they shal have [...] every mease of two dishes, one with pottage & boiled meate, the other roste (if it be no fasting day.) And if it be a fish daye, then they shal have two like meases of white meate & fish.”

3. (obsolete)A dwelling or messuage.

   “1628, July 15, was a Gild new erected by four young bachelors of the town, and kept at the college-house, of above twenty meases of persons, and the poor then well relieved.”

   “William Raynshaw, of Hulme, in the county of Lancaster, complains that whereas Hamnett Bent was seised in his demesne as of fee of certain meases of land, meadow, and pasture with appurtenances in Hulme […]”

4. (alt-of, obsolete)Obsolete spelling of mesh (of a fishing net).

   “In the records of the series of trials which began soon afterwards, the following interesting description of a Mount's Bay seine in the seventeenth century is given: "Saynes are very long and deep nets, of a close or narrow mease, and lengthened at each end by sleeves of a larger mease, and are used in this anner, viz.: […]”

verb

1. To catch or enmesh (fish) by the head in a seine.

   “( […] and except also fish meased in the sleeves of certain nets, called seynes), of which no tithes are demanded; […]”

   “[…] and also the customary payment for all pilchards taken in seynes (except meased pilchards); but they insisted that they ought not to pay any tithe or other thing in lieu thereof for lobsters or pilchards caught in driving nets […] or were meased in the sleeves of seynes […]”

   “[…] except only such fish as have been used for bate to catch other fish, and also fish meased (or caught by the head) in the sleeves of certain nets called saynes.”

   “Those fish 'meased', i.e., enmeshed in the sleeves of the seines, usually few, also belonged to the workers.”

name

1. A surname.