Word Confusion: Leach versus Leech

Posted December 18, 2012 by Kathy Davie in Author Resources, Self-Editing, Word Confusions, Writing

Revised as of
18 Jan 2023

This word confusion tends to crop up mostly in paranormal romance or urban fantasy tales.

Just keep in mind that vampires bite and suck blood from mammals. Much like the leeches you may pick up in streams or lakes.

To leach is more about percolating. It usually involves soil and draining minerals out of that ground.

Word Confusions . . .

. . . started as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with properly spelled words that were out of context in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end.

If you found this post on “Leach versus Leech” interesting, consider subscribing to KD Did It, if you’d like to track this post for future updates.

Return to top

Leach Leech

Soil leaching process

Podzol is the personal work of Richard Hartnup (Wikipedia user soilsrus) and is in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

You could argue that lEAching sucks minerals . . .


Leech on someone's foot

Leech Sucking is Bobjgalindo’s own work and under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons.

A lEEch bites and sucks your blood . . . bwah-hah-hah.

Part of Grammar:
Noun 1, leech3; Verb 2, intransitive & transitive

Plural for the noun: leeches
Gerund: leaching

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

Noun 1, 2, 3;
Verb 1, intransitive & transitive

Plural for the noun: leeches
Gerund: leeching

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

Noun:
The act or process of leaching 1

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
Noun:
A wormlike creature that sucks blood 1

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
Examples:
Noun:
We’ll need a new leach field.

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.

Noun:
Leeches have been used to suck the blood out of bruises thereby speeding up healing time.

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).

Derivatives:
Adjective: leachable, unleached
Noun: leachability, leachate, leacher
Adjective: leechlike
History of the Word:
  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.

Return to top

C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which words are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix them . . . and we’ll all benefit!

Satisfy your curiosity about other Word Confusions on its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Book Layout & Formatting Ideas, Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Writing Ideas and Resources, and Working Your Website.

Return to top

Resources for Leach versus Leech

Some of these links may be affiliate links, and I will earn a small percentage, if you should buy it. It does not affect the price you pay.

Apple Dictionary.com

Birrenkott, Brian A, Joseph L. Craig, and George R. McVey. “A Leach Collection System to Track the Release of Nitrogen from Controlled-release Fertilizers in Container Ornamentals.” HortScience. vol 40, issue 6. American Society for Horticultural Science. Oct 2005. Web. 18 Jan 2023. DOI: < https://doi.org/10.21273/HORTSCI.40.6.1887>. <https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/40/6/article-p1887.xml?rskey=ERwHk0>. Research article.

Dictionary.com: leach

The Free Dictionary: leach

Merriam-Webster: leech

Pollock, Allyson. “This Deadly Debt Spiral was Meant to Destroy the NHS. There is a Way to Stop It.” The Guardian. 5 July 2016. Web. 3 Dec 2022. <URL>. Article.

“Sail Components.” Wikipedia. 7 Sept 2022. Web. 18 Sept 2022. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sail_components>.

Vocabulary.com: leach

Walls, Jeannette. The Glass Castle.‎ Scribner, New York: 2006. <https://amzn.to/3XmLL9Q>.

Whidden, Tom. The Leech is the Thing. Sailing World. 20 Dec 2016. Web. 18 Jan 2023. <https://www.sailingworld.com/leech-is-thing/>. Excerpt.

Woolley, Hannah. The Queen-like Closet, Or, Rich Cabinet . Originally published 1670. Project Gutenberg: 2004. <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14377>. Prabhat Prakashan: 2017. <https://amzn.to/3ksIEil>. Cookbook. Ebook.

Return to top

Pinterest Photo Credits

Vampire by Jean-no under the Art Libre Copyleft license, via Wikimedia Commons. Rainbow Pool, 5 August 2013, by James St. John is under the CC BY 2.0 license, via Flickr.

Kathy's KD Did It signature