leak
Pluralleaks
Pluralleaks
- 1A crack, crevice, or hole through which water or another fluid escapes or gets in.
A small leak in the roof let rainwater drip onto the floor.
Plumbers traced the leak to a cracked joint behind the wall.
Similarhole, crack, puncture, opening
Note
The concrete sense the rest of the word grows from. Middle English leken meant "to let water in or out," and the hole works both ways: a roof or a boat leaks inward, a gas pipe outward. Its Germanic relatives, Middle Dutch leken and Old Norse leka, both meant "to leak, drip." Keep it distinct from the escaping flow. You patch this kind of leak, while the other kind you mop up or pump out.
- 2The passage of a fluid into or out of something through a crack, hole, or other opening.
A steady leak drained the reservoir before anyone noticed.
The faint hiss told them where the air leak was coming from.
Similarseepage, escape, discharge, outflow
Note
Here the word names the flow rather than the opening, which is why a leak can grow, slow, or outrun the pumps: the leak gained on the ship's pumps. On a diaper, big leaks means what got out, not where. When it is unclear whether a speaker means the hole or the escape, the verb usually decides: you plug the first and stem or contain the second.
- 3
- 4To lose liquid or gas because an opening is not properly sealed.
Faulty seals can leak gas into the cabin.
The reactor leaked coolant before engineers caught the fault.
Similarrelease, discharge, emit, spill
Note
The transitive half of a pair. Here the faulty container is the subject and what escapes is the object, as with wells leaking oil for decades. Its partner, the fluid-as-subject verb, turns that around: propane was leaking from a tank. Both are everyday English, so choose by what belongs in subject position, the broken thing or the substance getting out.
- 5A disclosure of secret information to people not meant to receive it.
A leak from inside the agency exposed the classified report.
The minister blamed the leak on a junior staffer.
Similardisclosure, revelation
- 6To disclose secret information quietly or anonymously, often to the media.
A whistleblower chose to leak the documents to reporters.
Officials feared that someone would leak the negotiation details.
Similardisclose, reveal, divulge, release, expose
Oppositeconceal, suppress, withhold
Note
Disclosure with a moral charge. Yes, Prime Minister (1987) built a joke on it as an irregular verb: "I give confidential press briefings; you leak; he's being charged under section 2(A) of the Official Secrets Act." The same act sounds official, sly or criminal depending on who does it. The object can be the secret or a clause, with to marking the recipient: leaked it to our competitors that...
- 7A loss of electric charge through faulty insulation, or the point where it occurs.
A current leak through the damaged insulation tripped the breaker.
Technicians located the leak at a frayed section of cable.
- 8A gradual loss of a system resource caused by a program's failure to release portions it reserved earlier.
A memory leak gradually consumed the server's available RAM.
Developers traced the leak to a loop that never freed its buffers.
Note
A programmer's word, usually met in compounds such as memory leak and resource leak. Nothing actually escapes the machine. A program reserves memory or another resource and never hands it back, so available capacity drains away over the life of the process. The image is a slow drip rather than a burst, and the fix is finding the reservation that is never released.
- 9The person through whom secret information reaches those not meant to receive it.
The agency launched a hunt to identify the leak within its ranks.
Editors refused to name the leak who handed them the memos.
Similarmole, source, informant, whistleblower
Note
The disclosure gets a face. The word sits naturally in confessions and accusations of the form X was the leak. Tony Holohan's We Need to Talk: A Memoir (2024) has both noun and verb in one breath: "I was the leak," and then "I decided to leak it." The person is named only by the gap they open in an organization's secrecy.
- 10To slip past a barrier, defense, or filter that would usually, or ideally, keep it out.
A few enemy drones leaked through the air defenses and reached the base.
Despite the new filter, a handful of spam messages still leak into her inbox every day.
Similarslip, filter, trickle, seep
Note
The fluid image is stretched to anything that slips past a barrier, usually with through. Kenneth N. Luongo and W. Thomas Wander's The Search for Security in Space (1989) has an undetected target that "would leak through the single defensive layer." What gets past is the subject, whereas the transitive use makes the barrier the subject instead.
- 11To fail to contain or exclude something, letting it pass where it would usually or preferably be blocked.
Cheap headphones can leak music to everyone nearby.
The poorly sealed booth leaked light onto the screen.
Note
Here the barrier is the subject, and it gives things away: a booth that leaks light, a defense that leaks points. Sports writing can use it for a side conceding steadily. Graham Bean's 2021 report on Scotland beating England at Twickenham says "England were leaking penalties." The verb suggests a steady, uncontrolled loss rather than one single failure.
- 12A vulgar slang word for an act of urination.
He stepped behind the tree to take a leak.
After three coffees he badly needed a leak.
Similarpee, piss, slash, wee, whiz
Note
Coarse but not shocking, this noun lives in the fixed phrase take a leak: "I have to take a leak." It is mildly vulgar slang, fine among friends but out of place with strangers, in writing, or anywhere medical. When unsure, say go to the bathroom. The verb has its own slang use, to urinate outright, with a longer literary history.
- 13To urinate, in slang or casual speech.
He went behind the shed to leak before the game started.
Drunk and laughing, they leaked into the bushes by the road.
Similarpee, urinate, piss, wee, whiz
Note
Older than it sounds. A character in Shakespeare's The First Part of Henry the Fourth complains that without a chamber pot "we leake in your Chimney," and in Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957) a cop gets out "to leak." Like take a leak, it belongs to casual talk, though the bare verb is sometimes the softer, more euphemistic choice.
- 14To bleed, in American slang.
The boxer was still leaking from a gash above his brow.
Keep pressure on the wound so you don't leak everywhere.
Similarbleed
Note
American slang that treats a wounded body like a punctured container: "He shanked him, now he's leaking." The person is the subject, just as a pipe is, and the blood goes unnamed. It has a hard, casual edge. In medical or formal settings the word is bleed.
- 15Tending to let fluid escape through cracks or holes; leaky.
Note
An adjective that has dropped out of English. Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1596) laments that "the bottle leake, and bag so torne" lets everything fall out. Modern English uses leaky instead, so recognize this form in old verse but do not write it. Today a leak bottle would be read as a noun compound.
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Origin
From Middle English leken ("to let water in or out"), from Old English *lecan, Middle Dutch leken, or Old Norse leka ("to leak, drip"), all from Proto-Germanic *lekaną ("to leak, drain") and ultimately Proto-Indo-European *leg- ("to leak"). It is related to Dutch lekken, German lecken, and Swedish läcka, all meaning "to leak."