Other forms: legs
A leg is one of the two long body parts you stand, walk and run on. Break a leg, cross your legs, long legs.
Furniture has legs too, and so does a journey: the first leg of the trip, the second leg of a tie in football, which is the return match. Break a leg is the theatrical way of wishing good luck, because saying good luck is held to be unlucky. Note leg it, British for run away; pull somebody's leg, meaning to tease; and not have a leg to stand on, meaning no case at all.
1nounlegOne of the long body parts you stand and walk on.
“He hurt his leg playing football.”
2nounstageOne stage of a journey or a contest.
“The first leg of our journey was a long train ride to Paris.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
leg is a limb or a stage.
Old Norse leggr, brought by the Vikings, displaced the native Old English sceanca, which survives as shank. It is one of the most everyday words English simply borrowed and kept.
Proto-Germanic
*lagjaz
Old Norse
leggr — leg, calf, bone of the arm or leg, hollow tube, stalk
Middle English
leg
English, today
leg
Built from
From Middle English leg, legge, from Old Norse leggr (“leg, calf, bone of the arm or leg, hollow tube, stalk”), from Proto-Germanic lagjaz, lagwijaz (“leg, thigh”) (see it for more). Cognate with Scots leg (“leg”), Icelandic leggur (“leg, limb”), Norwegian Bokmål legg (“leg”), Norwegian Nynorsk legg (“leg”), Swedish lägg (“leg, shank, shaft”), Danish læg (“leg”), lng lagi (“thigh, shank, leg”), Latin lacertus (“limb, arm”), Persian لنگ. Upon borrowing, mostly displaced the native Old English term sċanca (Modern English shank).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA