leach

noun

1. A quantity of wood ashes, through which water passes, and thus imbibes the alkali.
2. A tub or vat for leaching ashes, bark, etc.

   “"This is the leach," said Kitty, pointing to a large, yellowish, upright wooden cylinder, which rested on some slanting boards, down the surface of which ran a brownish liquid that dripped into a trough.”

3. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative spelling of leech.
4. A jelly-like sweetmeat popular in the fifteenth century.

verb

1. (transitive)To purge a soluble matter out of something by the action of a percolating fluid.

   “Heavy rainfall can leach out minerals important for plant growth from the soil.”

   “[T]he very wet winter will have washed much of the goodness out of the soil. Homemade compost and the load of manure we get from a friendly farmer may not be enough to compensate for what has leached from the ground.”

2. (intransitive)To part with soluble constituents by percolation.

   “The gangue was leached to recover minerals left behind by the original technology.”

3. (figuratively, intransitive)To bleed; to seep.

   “A more generic geography, one where the suburb uneasily abuts the commercial and industrial, or leaches out to a nonurban frontier.”

   “There's a second half to each video. He remembers now. He watched it passively, over and over, and never saw it. Something comes through. It's been leaching into the background of the world this whole time, in plain sight, and he never saw it, and it's here now—”

name

1. (countable, uncountable)A surname from Old English.
2. (countable, uncountable)A census-designated place in Delaware County, Oklahoma, United States.
3. (countable, uncountable)An unincorporated community in Carroll County, Tennessee, United States.
4. (countable, uncountable)A river in Gloucestershire, with a short stretch in Oxfordshire, England, which joins the Thames at Lechlade; in full, the River Leach.