Lead (pronounced led)

the metal, was, by the ancient alchemists, called Saturn. (Anglo-Saxon, leād.)

“That, after the failure of the king, he should ‘strike leadʹ in his own house seemed … an inevitable law”—Bret Harte: Fool of Five Forks.

· ·

Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.