leak
/liːk/
"leak" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“leak” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #6,160 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #6,160
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 4
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A crack, crevice, fissure, or hole which admits water or other fluid, or lets it escape.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| 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) |
Where “leak” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for leak is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, 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 generated misspelling index lists 4 likely wrong-spelling variants for leak, with forms such as "elak", "leakk", and "leka". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "let", "LED", "lee", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
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- (“… The correct English form is leak, spelled L-E-A-K.
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
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of leak - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "leak"?
What does "leak" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "leak"?
How do you pronounce "leak"?
What is the origin of the word "leak"?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “leak”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is L-E-A-K - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /liːk/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “let” - see the side-by-side comparison. leak vs let
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.