leak
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "leak", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "leak" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "leak" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
leak is aEnglishnoun. It means: A crack, crevice, fissure, or hole which admits water or other fluid, or lets it escape. Pronounced /liːk/. It ranks #6,160 in English word frequency. Often confused with let and LED.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | leak |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /liːk/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #6,160 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for leak is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /liːk/. Corpus data places it at rank #6,160 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 4 documented wrong-spelling variants for leak, with forms such as "elak", "leakk", and "leka". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "let", "LED", "lee", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English leken (“to let water in or out”), from Old English *lecan (“to leak”), Middle Dutch leken (“to leak, drip”) or Old Norse leka (“to leak, drip”); all from Proto-Germanic *lekaną (“to leak, drain”), from Proto-Indo-European *leg-, *leǵ- (“… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is leak, spelled L-E-A-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A crack, crevice, fissure, or hole which admits water or other fluid, or lets it escape.
- 2The entrance or escape of a fluid through a crack, fissure, or other aperture.
- 3A divulgation, or disclosure, of information previously held secret.
- 4The person through whom such divulgation, or disclosure, occurs.
- 5A loss of electricity through imperfect insulation, or the point where it occurs.
- 6The gradual loss of a system resource caused by failure to deallocate previously reserved portions.
- 7An act of urination.
Etymology
From Middle English leken (“to let water in or out”), from Old English *lecan (“to leak”), Middle Dutch leken (“to leak, drip”) or Old Norse leka (“to leak, drip”); all from Proto-Germanic *lekaną (“to leak, drain”), from Proto-Indo-European *leg-, *leǵ- (“to leak”). Cognate with Dutch lekken (“to leak”), German lechen, lecken (“to leak”), Danish lække (“to leak”), Swedish läcka (“to leak”), Icelandic leka (“to leak”). Related also to Old English leċċan (“to water, wet”), Albanian lag, lak (“I damp, make wet”). See also leach, lake. (divulgation, disclosure of information): Compare typologically Bulgarian изтичане (iztičane), Polish przeciek, Russian уте́чка (utéčka) (akin to течь impf or f (tečʹ)).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: elak,leakk,leka,lleak
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for leak
Misspelling Variants of "leak"
Frequency rank: #6,160 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: