leach

A quantity of wood ashes, through which water passes, and thus imbibes the alkali.

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.

Alternative spelling of leech.alt-ofalternative

A jelly-like sweetmeat popular in the fifteenth century.

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

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

To part with soluble constituents by percolation.intransitive

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

To bleed; to seep.figurativelyintransitive

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