lesson
Plurallessons
Verblessons, lessoning, lessoned
Plurallessons
Formslessons, lessoning, lessoned
- 1
- 2
- 3An experience or example that serves as a warning to avoid something or as encouragement to pursue it.
The collapse of the old bridge became a lesson for every engineer in the region.
Her quiet generosity was a lesson to colleagues who valued only ambition.
Similarexample, warning, model, deterrent
Note
The sense behind the fixed phrase teach someone a lesson: "I hope this accident taught you a lesson!" The teacher is usually an event rather than a person, and the learner pays for what is learned. It also works with to, as in a good lesson to me, when the experience stands as an example. Keep it apart from the scolding meaning, where someone delivers the lesson in words.
- 4A learning task that a teacher assigns to a student to complete, such as homework.
He left his history lesson unfinished and had to stay after class.
Pupils were expected to bring their completed lessons each Monday.
Similarassignment, homework, exercise
- 5A severe scolding or rebuke intended to correct behavior or warn against repeating a fault.
The sergeant delivered a blistering lesson to the recruits who broke ranks.
After the broken window, he received a lesson he would not soon forget.
Similarscolding, rebuke, reprimand, lecture
Note
Here the lesson is spoken, and sharp: a dressing-down rather than a class. Its typical construction is give someone a lesson for doing something, as when Philip Sidney writes, before 1587, "She would give her a lesson for walking so late." The for-clause names the fault being corrected, and that is what separates a rebuke from ordinary teaching.
- 6A passage from the Bible or another sacred text read aloud as part of a religious service.
The first lesson at Evensong was taken from the Book of Job.
Each service includes two lessons drawn from scripture.
Note
The church sense stays closest to the word's root: through Old French leçon from Latin lēctiō, "a reading," from legō, "I read, I gather." A lesson in a service is literally a passage read aloud, and the closing formula Here endeth the first lesson keeps the older verb ending alive. English took the same Latin word in a second time as lection, a doublet of lesson.
- 7To teach a person or give them instruction in something.
Experienced sailors would lesson the new hands before each voyage.
The master patiently lessoned his pupils in the rules of grammar.
Similarteach, instruct, tutor, school, train
Note
Its natural setting is verse. The Faerie Queene (1590) has Pleasure "lessoned In all the lore of loue," and Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812) says kindness "doth lesson happier men." The verb is fully regular (lessons, lessoning, lessoned) and takes in for the subject taught. Like the archaic sense of instructing, it belongs to literary writing rather than everyday speech.
- 8A musical exercise or short composition written to develop a particular skill or technique.
The student worked through a lesson aimed at improving her phrasing.
Each lesson in the book focuses on a different bowing technique.
Note
A musician's term for a piece written to train the hands as much as to please the ear, built around a skill such as fingering or bowing. In the keyboard and lute repertoires of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, lesson was the usual name for such practice pieces. Much of that role later passed to the étude. The word sits between exercise and composition: a lesson is meant to be played, not just drilled.
Less common meaning
- 9To instruct or teach someone, especially in proper conduct or duty.
Her grandmother lessoned her in the duties of the household.
And you, my sister—you, who lesson me on endurance, your cheek is pale, and your step languid; even with you, how much has life lost its interest!
1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Francesca CarraraNote
An archaic verb that now turns up mainly in deliberately old-fashioned or poetic prose, where it can carry a note of admonishment as well as instruction. The person taught is the direct object, and the subject follows with on: Letitia Landon in 1834 writes of a sister "who lesson me on endurance." In modern writing, teach or instruct is the safe choice, and lesson used this way will read as consciously antique.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
This word comes from Middle English lessoun, from Old French leçon, from Latin lēctiō, lēctiōnem ("a reading"), which in turn comes from legō ("I read, I gather"). It is a doublet of lection.