leaked

1. 1
   verb

   Past tense and past participle of leak.

   Oil leaked across the garage floor before anyone noticed the puddle.

   Details of the merger had leaked to reporters days before the announcement.

   Note

   The form is regular, so one spelling serves both the simple past and the participle. Because leak works in both directions, so does this form: a pipe leaked oil, or oil leaked from the pipe. Only the transitive uses can be made passive, as in a memo was leaked to reporters. That passive participle is the one that settled into the adjective for disclosed documents.

2. 2
   adjective

   Confidential by intent but released to the public or the press, said of a document or similar material produced by a company or organization.

   The leaked memo revealed that executives had approved the cuts months earlier.

   Investigators traced the leaked financial records back to a single employee.

   Note

   Here the participle sits before a noun as a fixed label: a leaked memo, leaked financial records. It does not compare, since one memo cannot be more leaked than another. It usually describes an institution's own paperwork, as in a leaked memo from Downing Street. The disclosure it describes comes from the secret-telling use of leak, not the plumbing one.

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