Leakage

How to spell leakage

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce leakage

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does leakage mean?

1. nounThe gradual escape of liquid, gas, electricity, or information through a crack, fault, or unintended channel, or the amount that escapes.

Leakage in a sentence

• The plumber traced the leakage to a corroded joint under the sink.

• Engineers measured current leakage across the damaged insulation.

Where does leakage come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word 'leak' is Germanic in origin, traceable to the Old Norse verb 'leka', meaning 'to drip' or 'to let water through', which is closely related to Old English and Middle Dutch words for trickling or seeping. The 'ea' spelling preserves the long vowel sound that English settled on for this family of words, and it is the same vowel pattern seen in 'leap' and 'lean'. The suffix '-age' arrived through Old French and ultimately Latin, where it formed nouns describing an action, a quantity, or a resulting state; you see the same ending in 'breakage', 'shrinkage', and 'wastage'. Combining a Norse-rooted verb with a French-derived suffix, 'leakage' emerged in English by the late 1400s to name both the act of leaking and the amount of fluid lost. The spelling trap lies in keeping the silent 'e' before the suffix, so that 'leak' plus 'age' becomes 'leakage' rather than the mistaken 'leakge'.

How the word is built

• leak (to escape through a gap)
• -age (noun suffix meaning the act, amount, or result of)