leach

Meanings

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.
3. Alternative spelling of leech.
4. 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.
2. To part with soluble constituents by percolation.
3. To bleed; to seep.

1. A surname from Old English.
2. A census-designated place in Delaware County, Oklahoma, United States.
3. An unincorporated community in Carroll County, Tennessee, United States.
4. A river in Gloucestershire, with a short stretch in Oxfordshire, England, which joins the Thames at Lechlade; in full, the River Leach.

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.