leach
/liːt͡ʃ/UK/liːt͡ʃ/
leach noun: a quantity of wood ashes, through which water passes, and thus imbibes the alkali. Also the alternative spelling of leech.
Noun
leach (plural leaches)
- A quantity of wood ashes, through which water passes, and thus imbibes the alkali.
- 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.1894, Robert Barr, chapter 7, in In the Midst of Alarms
- A jelly-like sweetmeat popular in the fifteenth century.
Verb
leach (third-person singular simple present leaches, present participle leaching, simple past and past participle leached)
- 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.2014 April 21, Mary Keen, “You can still teach an old gardener new tricks: Even the hardiest of us gardeners occasionally learn useful new techniques [print version: Gardening is always ready to...
- To part with soluble constituents by percolation.
- The gangue was leached to recover minerals left behind by the original technology.
- 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.2007, Andrew Shanken, “The Sublime "Jackass"”, in Places, volume 19
- There's a second half to each video. He remembers now. He watched it passively, over and over, and never saw it. Something comes through. It's been leaching into the background of the world this whole time, in plain sight, and he never saw it, and it's here now—2019 April 10, qntm, “CASE HATE RED”, in There Is No Antimemetics Division, →ISBN, page 140
Proper noun capitalized: Leach
Leach (countable and uncountable, plural Leaches)
- A surname from Old English.
- A census-designated place in Delaware County, Oklahoma, United States.
- An unincorporated community in Carroll County, Tennessee, United States.
- A river in Gloucestershire, with a short stretch in Oxfordshire, England, which joins the Thames at Lechlade; in full, the River Leach.
Also used as
leach is also the alternative spelling of leech.
leach meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali
leach in Hindi
- लीच
leach in Tamil
- லீச்
leach in Urdu
- لیچ
leach in Bengali
- লিচ
More languagesFewer languages
- leach in Telugu
- లీచ్
- leach in Malayalam
- ലീച്ച്
- leach in Kannada
- ಲೀಚ್
- leach in Punjabi
- ਲੀਚ
- leach in Gujarati
- લીચ
- leach in Odia
- ଲିଚ୍, ଲିଚ୍ |
Examples of leach in a sentence
- I rarely had birthday parties, so I leached onto other people's parties, especially Alize's.
- So leach boy, go join your friends in GTA, and tell them how much it sucks here.
- In leaching process, determination of waterhead is important for intensifying leaching, avoiding pollution, etc.
Forms of leach
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | leaches |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | leaches |
| present participle | leaching |
| past participle | leached |
| past | leached |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Leaches |
| alternative form | Latch |
| alternative form | Leech |
| alternative form | Leetch |
| alternative form | Leitch |
| alternative form | Litch |
| alternative form | Lytch |
Origin of leach
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).
Words formed from leach
Words that rhyme with leach
Questions about leach
- What does leach mean?
- Leach means a quantity of wood ashes, through which water passes, and thus imbibes the alkali.
- What is leach in Hindi?
- Leach in Hindi is लीच. See Leach meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is leach?
- Leach can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce leach?
- Leach is pronounced /liːt͡ʃ/ (UK).
- What is the plural of leach?
- The plural of leach is leaches.
Words near leach in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: leach (page history and authors); Leach (page history and authors); leach (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); leach (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); leach (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); leach (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); leach (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); leach (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); leach (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); leach (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); leach (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); leach (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-leach.ogg.
Cite this entry: “leach.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/leach. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.