Leach
name, noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A quantity of wood ashes, through which water passes, and thus imbibes the alkali.
- 2 the process of leaching wordnet
- 3 A tub or vat for leaching ashes, bark, etc.
""This is the leach," said Kitty, pointing to a large, yellowish, upright wooden cylinder, which rested on some slanting boards, down the surface of which ran a brownish liquid that dripped into a trough."
- 4 Alternative spelling of leech. alt-of, alternative
- 5 A jelly-like sweetmeat popular in the fifteenth century.
- 1 To purge a soluble matter out of something by the action of a percolating fluid. transitive
"Heavy rainfall can leach out minerals important for plant growth from the soil."
- 2 remove substances from by a percolating liquid wordnet
- 3 To part with soluble constituents by percolation. intransitive
"The gangue was leached to recover minerals left behind by the original technology."
- 4 permeate or penetrate gradually wordnet
- 5 To bleed; to seep. figuratively, intransitive
"A more generic geography, one where the suburb uneasily abuts the commercial and industrial, or leaches out to a nonurban frontier."
Show 1 more definition
- 6 cause (a liquid) to leach or percolate wordnet
- 1 A surname from Old English. countable, uncountable
- 2 A census-designated place in Delaware County, Oklahoma, United States. countable, uncountable
- 3 An unincorporated community in Carroll County, Tennessee, United States. countable, uncountable
- 4 A river in Gloucestershire, with a short stretch in Oxfordshire, England, which joins the Thames at Lechlade; in full, the River Leach. countable, uncountable
Example
More examples"Washington Aqueduct says much can happen as water travels to the consumer. Jacobus says old pipes and fixtures can leach metals. He says water treatment facilities were never designed to remove chemicals that are now showing up."
Etymology
From Middle English leche (“leachate; sluggish stream”), from Old English *lǣċ, *lǣċe (“muddy stream”), from Proto-Germanic *lēkijō (“a leak, drain, flow”) (compare Proto-Germanic *lekaną (“to leak, drain”)), from Proto-Indo-European *leǵ- (“to leak”). Cognate with Old English leċċan (“to water, moisten”), Old English lacu (“stream, pool, pond”). More at leak, lake.
From Middle English *lechen, *lecchen, from Old English leċċan, from Proto-Germanic *lakjaną, from Proto-Indo-European *leǵ- (“to leak”).
Two main origins: * Occupational surname for a physician, from Old English lǣċe (“doctor, physician”). * Topographic surname for someone who lived by a boggy stream, from Old English læcc (“boggy stream”) (related to Proto-Germanic *lekaną), or from several English placenames related to this (compare Leake).
Related phrases
More for "leach"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.