Lief

Lief is an archaic English word that appears in both adverbial and adjectival forms. As an adverb, it means gladly, willingly, or with pleasure, and is most familiar today through the fixed expression as lief, meaning “would rather” or “preferably.” For example, I would as lief stay here as go there conveys a preference. As an adjective, lief can mean dear or beloved in older usage, though this sense is now rare outside historical or literary contexts. In modern English, the word survives mainly in poetry, ballads, and historical writing to evoke a bygone register.

Etymology and related forms trace lief to Old English leof, leofe, meaning dear or beloved, with cognates in other Germanic languages such as German lieb and Dutch lief. The semantic link between “dear” and “willing” aided its transition into the adverbial sense of doing something with pleasure or preference.

Usage notes and examples: because it is archaic, lief is typically encountered in literary or stylistic contexts. It is uncommon in everyday speech, though it can appear in humorous or elevated prose to evoke older diction. The expression as lief is often part of comparative constructions like would as lief do X as do Y, indicating a choice in preference.

Beyond language, lief also refers to a software project acronym. LIEF stands for Library to Instrument Executable Formats, an open-source cross-platform library that provides a unified API to parse, modify, and analyze executable formats such as ELF, PE, and Mach-O. It offers bindings for languages like Python and is used in binary analysis and research contexts.