Adjective: left
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
| Comparative | further left; farther left; lefter |
| Superlative | furthest left; farthest left; leftmost; leftest |
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more left |
| Superlative | most left |
Sample Sentences
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Near-synonym: port
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The left side.
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The road up ahead contains a left bend.
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Rotate the bolt to the left to loosen it.
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The Eiffel Tower is on the left bank of the Seine.
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The following dispatch has been received from Viceroy Alexieff, dated Mukden, March 22:
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“Gen. Mitchenkow reports that on March 17 our scouts approached Anju and observed on the left bank of the Ching Chong river, opposite Anju, retrenchments made by the enemy. [1904 March 23 [1904 March 22], Viceroy Alexieff, quotee, “Waiting for the First Collision in the Yalu Region”, in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, volume 56, number 215, St. Louis, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 2, column 2:]
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It should be noted that there is now no intelligentsia that is not in some sense "Left". Perhaps the last right-wing intellectual was T. E. Lawrence. Since about 1930 everyone describable as an “intellectual” has lived in a state of chronic discontent with the existing order. [1941, George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn:]
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Who does not know the practical man who in his own field denounces socialism as "pernicious rot" but when he steps outside his subject spouts socialism like any left journalist. [1949, F. A. Hayek, “The Intellectuals and Socialism”, in University of Chicago Law Review, volume 16, number 3, Chicago: University of Chicago, →DOI, page 422:]
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left dislocation
Etymology
From Middle English left, luft, leoft, lift, lyft, from Old English left, lyft (“weak, clumsy, foolish”), attested in Old English lyftādl (“palsy, paralysis”), from Proto-Germanic *luft-, from *lubjaną (“to castrate, lop off”) (compare dialectal English lib, West Frisian lobje, Dutch lubben), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)lewp-, *(s)lup- (“hanging limply”). Compare Scots left (“left”), North Frisian lefts, leeft, leefts (“left”), West Frisian lofts (“left”), obsolete Dutch lucht, leftsch, lefts, lefs (“left”), dialectal Dutch loof (“weak, worthless”), archaic Low German lucht (“left”).