A lease is a legal agreement where you pay to use something that belongs to someone else for a specific period of time. When your family leases an apartment, you pay rent each month to live there, but the landlord still owns the building. When a business leases office space, they can use it for their company without buying the entire building.

The most common things people lease are homes, apartments, cars, and equipment. A typical apartment lease might last one year, while a car lease often runs for two or three years. At the end of the lease period, you either return what you've been using, renew the lease to keep using it longer, or sometimes have the option to buy it.

Leasing differs from renting in that a lease usually involves a formal written contract for a set time period. When you rent a movie for one night, that's not a lease. But when a farmer leases farmland for the growing season, that's a serious agreement with terms both sides must follow.

The word also works as a verb: a company might lease new computers, or a rancher might lease grazing land. People sometimes say something has given them “a new lease on life” when they get a fresh start or second chance, like an athlete recovering from an injury.