leave
/ˈliːv/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.34 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "I left my car at home and took a bus to work."
- "The ants did not leave so much as a crumb of bread."
- "There's not much food left. We'd better go to the shops."
- "[…] St. Bede's at this period of its history was perhaps the poorest and most miserable parish in the East End of London. Close-packed, crushed by the buttressed height of the railway viaduct, rendered airless by huge walls of factories, it at once banished lively interest from a stranger's mind and left only a dull oppression of the spirit."
- "Plant breeding is always a numbers game.[…]. The wild species we use are rich in genetic variation,[…]. In addition, we are looking for rare alleles, so the more plants we try, the better. These rarities may be new mutations, or they can be existing ones that are neutral—or are even selected against—in a wild population. A good example is mutations that disrupt seed dispersal, leaving the seeds on the heads long after they are ripe."
- "The lightning left her dazzled for several minutes."
Etymology
From Middle English leven, from Old English lǣfan (“to leave”), from Proto-West Germanic *laibijan, from Proto-Germanic *laibijaną (“to let stay, leave”), causative of *lībaną (“to stay, remain”), from Proto-Indo-European *leyp- (“to stick; fat”). Cognate with Old Frisian lēva (“to leave”), dialectal Dutch loven (“to have left over, save, keep”), Old Saxon lēvian, Old High German leiban (“to leave”), Old Norse leifa (“to leave over”) (whence Icelandic leifa (“to leave food uneaten”), Swedish leva (“to leave”)), lifna (“to be left”) (whence Danish levne). More at lave, belive. The noun is attested since the 19th century, with earliest references to billiards.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Usage
Inflected Forms
leaves (present, singular)
leaving (participle, present)
left (participle, past)
left (past)
no-table-tags (table tags)
glossary (inflection template)
left (first person, past)
leavest (archaic, present)
left (past, second person)
leftest (archaic, past)
leaveth (archaic, present)
left (past, singular)