Word Confusion: Leach versus Leech

Plural for the noun: leeches
Gerund: leaching

Third person present verb: leaches
Past tense or past participle: leached
Present participle: leaching

Plural for the noun: leeches
Gerund: leeching

Third person present verb: leeches
Past tense or past participle: leeched
Present participle: leeching

A porous, perforated, or sievelike vessel that holds material to be leached

The substance through which a liquid is leached

A product or solution formed by leaching, especially a solution containing contaminants picked up through the leaching of soil

A jelly-like sweetmeat popular in the fifteenth century

[Nautical] A variant spelling of leech 3

Verb, intransitive:
[With reference to a soluble chemical or mineral] Drain away from soil, ash, or similar material by the action of percolating liquid, especially rainwater ²

Verb, transitive:
[With reference to a soluble chemical or mineral] Drain away from soil, ash, or similar material by the action of percolating liquid, especially rainwater ²

• Subject soil, ash, ore, etc., to a leaching process

A person who extorts profit from or sponges on others

[Archaic] Doctor, healer ²

[Slang] Vampire

[Sailing] After or leeward edge of a fore-and-aft sail ³

Leeward edge of a spinnaker

Vertical edge of a square sail

[Computing] One who benefits, usually deliberately, from others’ information or effort but does not offer anything in return

Verb, intransitive:
Habitually exploit or rely on ¹

Verb, transitive:
To apply leeches to, so as to bleed ¹

To cling to and feed upon or drain, as a leech

[Archaic] To cure

• Heal

Birrenkott et al wrote about of a leach collection system to track the amount of nitrogen released from controlled-release fertilizers in ornamental containers” (Birrenkott).

“Most of it’s for research on cyanide leaching” (Walls).

Gold is a leach product with those materials left over commonly known as tailings.

“To make Leach and to colour it” (Woolley).

“It’s been said that the only reason to have a front of a main is to be able to attach the leach area to the mast!” (Whidden).

Verb, intransitive:
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring discussed pesticides that leach into rivers.

Fertilizer can be leached away by too much rainwater.

Ash is readily leached.

Verb, transitive:
The nutrient is quickly leached away.

Gold can be leached out of the ore.

We’ll need to leach out alkali from ashes.

We’ll need a leech to bandage him up.

If you’ve read any of the Outlander series, you know how often Claire uses leeches as part of her healing technique.

I am image leeching when I directly link to a book cover in Goodreads.

The leech is the angled side, the aft or back edge, of a sail.

If incorrectly tensioned, the leech of a sail may flutter noisily (Sail ).

Verb, intransitive:
He’s leeching off the kindness of others.

Can’t you see he’s leeching off you?

“She would leech on to him and drain the life out of him.” – W.L. Gresham

Verb, transitive:
His relatives leeched him until his entire fortune was exhausted.

The doctor leeched the blood from his bruise.

“Contracting leeches money and scarce resources from the system” (Pollock).

1. 1425–75, late Middle English leche meaning leachate, infusion, and probably Old English *læc(e), *lec(e), akin to leccan meaning to wet, moisten, causative of leak.
2. Old English leccan meaning to water is of West Germanic origin.

   The current sense dates from the mid 19th century.

1. From Old English lǣce, lȳce and related to the Middle Dutch lake, lieke.
2. From Old English lǣce, of Germanic origin.
3. Late 15th century.

   Probably of Scandinavian origin and related to Swedish lik, Danish lig, denoting a rope sewn round the edge of a sail to stop the canvas from tearing.