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leach

noun
/liːt͡ʃ/UK

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.

  1. derived from *leǵ-✻ — “to leak”
  2. inherited from *lēkijō✻ — “a leak, drain, flow”
  3. inherited from *lǣċ✻
  4. inherited from leche — “leachate; sluggish stream”

Definitions

  1. A quantity of wood ashes, through which water passes, and thus imbibes the alkali.

  2. 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.

  3. Alternative spelling of leech.

  4. ›+ 8 more definitions

    1. A jelly-like sweetmeat popular in the fifteenth century.

    2. To purge a soluble matter out of something by the action of a percolating fluid.

      • Heavy rainfall can leach out minerals important for plant growth from the soil.
      • [T]he very wet winter will have washed much of the goodness out of the soil. Homemade compost and the load of manure we get from a friendly farmer may not be enough to compensate for what has leached from the ground.

    3. To part with soluble constituents by percolation.

      • The gangue was leached to recover minerals left behind by the original technology.

    4. To bleed

      To bleed; to seep.

      • A more generic geography, one where the suburb uneasily abuts the commercial and industrial, or leaches out to a nonurban frontier.

    5. A surname from Old English.

    6. A census-designated place in Delaware County, Oklahoma, United States.

    7. An unincorporated community in Carroll County, Tennessee, United States.

    8. A river in Gloucestershire, with a short stretch in Oxfordshire, England, which joins the…

      A river in Gloucestershire, with a short stretch in Oxfordshire, England, which joins the Thames at Lechlade; in full, the River Leach.

The neighborhood

Derived

leachtub, leachy, bioleached, leachability, leachable, leachant, leachate, leach brine, leacher, leaching, unleached

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for leach. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA