Other forms: left, leaving, leaves
To leave is to go away from where you are. You leave the house at eight, leave a party early, leave the room and close the door behind you.
The other half of leave is what stays behind: you leave your keys on the table, leave a note on the fridge, leave the window open all night. Leave me alone means stop bothering me; leave it to me means I will handle it; leaving a job or a marriage is the permanent kind of going. As a noun, leave is time away from work that has been granted to you — annual leave, sick leave, maternity leave, a soldier home on leave. Keep leave and forget apart: you leave your umbrella on the train, and you forget your umbrella, but you never forget it on the train. The past form is left, never leaved.
1verbleaveTo go away from a place or a person.~17%
“We leave for the airport at six tomorrow morning.”
2verbtakingTo let something stay where it is, or to go without taking it.~6%
“Please leave your muddy boots by the door.”
3verbparticularTo let something stay in a particular state.~2%
“Leave the door open, it's warm in here.”
4verbstopTo stop working somewhere, or to end a relationship.~11%
“She is leaving the company at the end of March.”
5verbgiveTo give something to someone after your death.~2%
“He plans to leave the house to his niece.”
6nountimeTime away from work that your employer has agreed to.~62%
“She is on maternity leave until September.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 17 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: depart
Leave comes from Old English lǣfan, which sits on a Proto-Germanic verb meaning to let stay or remain — so to leave something was to make it stay put. Further back is the Indo-European root *leyp-, 'to stick'. Whatever is left over is whatever stuck behind.
Proto-Indo-European
*leyp- — to stick; fat
Proto-Germanic
*laibijaną — to let stay, leave
Proto-West Germanic
*laibijan
Old English
lǣfan — to leave
Middle English
leven
English, today
leave
Built from
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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA