mease

The English Dialect Dictionary suggests Old Norse meiss (“wooden box, as would be used for counting fish”) as a source; The Century Dictionary suggests that the term comes via Old French from a Latin word *mesa (“barrel”). One can also compare German Mass (“measure”) and indeed measure itself.

mease (plural meases)

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

   a mease of herrings

   • 1894, [British] Parliamentary Papers: 1850-1908, volume 24, page 70:

     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.

   • 1895 November 23, Western Morning News:

     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.

   • 1905, Report on the Sea and Inland Fisheries of Ireland, page xviii:

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

Variant of mess / mese.

mease (plural meases)

1. (obsolete) A mess, a mese: a meal.
   • 1590, Thomas Lodge, Robert Greene, A Looking Glass for London and England:

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

   • 1779, Francis Peck, Desiderata Curiosa: Or, A Collection of Divers Scarce and Curious Pieces:

     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.

Presumably related to messuage.

mease (plural meases)

1. (obsolete) A dwelling or messuage.
   • 1805, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk:

     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.

   • c. 1541, William Ranshaw versus John Hayward and Others re Title to Goods and Chattels at Hulme, reported in the Pleadings and Depositions in the Duchy Court of Lancaster, time of Henry VIII (1897), volume 35, page 134:

     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 […]

From mesh?

mease (plural meases)

1. Obsolete spelling of mesh (of a fishing net).
   • 1972, Cyril Noall, Cornish Seines and Seiners: A History of the Pilchard Fishing Industry, page 70, quoting an older work:

     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.: […]

mease (third-person singular simple present meases, present participle measing, simple past and past participle meased)

1. To catch or enmesh (fish) by the head in a seine.
   • 1798, Hutton Wood, Great Britain. Court of Exchequer, A Collection of Decrees by the Court of Exchequer in Tithe-causes: From the Usurpation to the Present Time. [1650-1798], page 285:

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

   • 1826, Francis King Eagle, Edward Younge, A Collection of the Reports of Cases, the Statutes, and Ecclesiastical Laws, Relating to Tithes: With a Copious Analytical Index, page 529:

     […] 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 […]

   • 1900, The English Reports: House of Lords (1677-1865), page 1055:

     […] 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.

   • 1974, James Whetter, Cornwall in the 17th Century: An Economic History of Kernow:

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

• “mease”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• The English Dialect Dictionary (Joseph Wright)
• The Open Court (1911), volume 25, page 416: The Glasgow Herald of Sept. 13, 1886, says: A mease [of herring] ... is five hundreds of 120 each.

• Amees, Aseem, Eames, Emesa, Maese, Samee, amese, eames

From Old French ameiser.

• IPA^(key): /miːz/

mease (third-person singular simple present meases, present participle measin, simple past meased, past participle meased)

1. to mitigate, alleviate, assuage
2. to soothe, pacify

mease

1. first/third-person singular imperfect subjunctive of mear