Fleet

From fleet (stream, estuary).

• IPA^(key): /fliːt/
• Rhymes: -iːt
• Homophone: fleet

Fleet

1. A river (the River Fleet) in London, England, now buried underground, that flowed under the Eastern end of the present Fleet Street.
   • 2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 29:

     This is hard-core London, and just before Farringdon station you will be able to glimpse the vast steel pipe that carries what was the Fleet River and is now the Fleet sewer over your head.
     The Fleet looks safely contained now, although you never know. It surprises me that no terrorist has made common cause with the surly and embittered Fleet, which, in Peter Ackroyd's words became 'a river of death' as it sidled through the meanest streets of London en route to the Thames.

2. A former prison (the Fleet Prison) in London, which originally stood near the stream.
3. A river, the Water of Fleet, in Dumfries and Galloway council area, Scotland.
4. A town in Hart district, Hampshire, England.
5. A hamlet in Alberta, Canada.
6. A surname.

• Fleet Street
• Gatehouse of Fleet (Scotland)

• felte, lefte

From German Low German and Middle Low German vlēt, from Old Saxon fliot, from Proto-West Germanic *fleut, from Proto-Germanic *fleutą (“stream, river”). Cognate to Dutch vliet, English fleet.

• IPA^(key): /fleːt/

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Fleet n (strong, genitive Fleets, plural Fleete)

1. a watercourse through marshland
2. a kind of city canal similar to the Dutch gracht, found in Hamburg and some other northern German cities