Leaked

How to spell leaked

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce leaked

What does leaked mean?

1. verbAllowed a liquid or gas to escape accidentally through a hole or crack (past tense of leak).
2. verbDeliberately or accidentally made secret information available to people who were not meant to have it (past tense of leak).

Leaked in a sentence

• The old radiator leaked water all over the kitchen floor.

• The quarterly figures were leaked to the press before the official announcement.

• Fuel leaked from the cracked tank during the long drive.

• Someone inside the company leaked the merger plans to a rival.

Where does leaked come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This is the past form of the verb 'leak', which goes back to a Germanic root meaning to drip or to let liquid escape through a flaw. English likely picked it up around the 1300s from Old Norse 'leka' or the closely related Middle Dutch 'leken', both meaning to drip or trickle, and the sense fits a seafaring culture worried about water seeping into ships. The spelling settled on the 'ea' digraph for the long 'ee' sound, the same pattern seen in 'speak' and 'peak'. From the literal idea of water escaping through a crack, English later extended the word to secret information escaping to people who were not meant to have it, a figurative use that became common in the twentieth century. The trap in spelling 'leaked' is purely the 'ea' vowel, since the word sounds exactly like it could be spelt 'leeked'.

How the word is built

• leak (root: to let fluid pass through a gap)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)