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In direct response to Vic’s comment, I’d like to posit a possibility. The writer could very well be using a metaphor and the reader construed it as a misuse of the word. But if the chemicals suck metals from the body, the way a leech sucks blood from it, it seems like an apt word choice?ĭani’s comment makes perfect sense. How many times do we see the misspellings of its/it’s or your/you’re? Homonyms seem to get people every time. This is ironic, too, because a dictionary is right at your fingertips on your computer. I think the biggest problem these days is that people don’t check spelling or definitions. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below: Leak as a verb meaning “to piss,” however, dates from 1596. We can thank Henry Miller for the first published use of leak as a noun meaning “the act of urination” ( Tropic of Cancer ). The figurative use of the noun leak to mean “the information leaked” didn’t come along until 1950: The Post published the latest leak from the White House. The transitive use, “to leak information,” is recorded from 1859. The intransitive use of leak with this figurative meaning dates from 1832.

Related to leach is the word leak, “to let water in or out.” It may seem that the figurative sense of leak to mean “allowing secret matters come to public attention” must be a 20th century innovation, but it’s not. The Wired writer was using the word in the sense of “to take away by percolation.” The word leach comes from the OE verb leccan, “to moisten.” In current usage the verb leach refers to percolation of a liquid.

The word leech is the old word for “doctor.” It comes from OE laece, “physician.” Leech meaning “bloodsucking aquatic worm” may have originally been a different word, but assimilated to the word for doctor, possibly because doctors used leeches for blood-letting.įiguratively, a leech is a person in a parasitic relationship with another. Pronounced the same, leech and leach have different meanings. certain chemicals that leech metals from the body. Reader Erik Engstrom was surprised to see this misuse of the word leech in an article at Wired: