Leap

How to spell leap

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce leap

What does leap mean?

1. verbTo jump or spring a distance, especially upward or forward.
2. nounAn act of jumping; a bound or spring through the air.

Leap in a sentence

• verb

  The cat will leap onto the windowsill the moment the curtain moves.

• noun

  A single leap carried the dancer to the centre of the stage.

• verb

  She trained for months so she could leap across the wide ditch.

• noun

  The deer cleared the fence in one effortless leap.

Where does leap come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Leap descends from the Old English verb hleapan, which meant 'to jump, run, or spring up', and it belongs to a family of related words across the older Germanic languages, including the Old Norse hlaupa and the Old High German hlouffan. The original sense covered any vigorous bounding movement, which is why the related word 'gallop' (borrowed later through French) ultimately traces back to the same Germanic source. Over the centuries the spelling shed its awkward initial 'hl' cluster and settled into the modern 'leap', while the vowel kept the long 'ee' sound spelled with the 'ea' digraph. The noun sense, 'a jump or bound', grew directly out of the verb. The same root also gave English 'leapfrog' and the calendar term 'leap year', so named because a fixed date 'leaps' forward an extra weekday in those years.

How the word is built

• Single native root: leap (from Old English hleapan, 'to jump'); no prefix or suffix.