Other forms: seeps, seeping, seeped
To seep is to pass slowly through small openings. Water seeped in, seeping through the wall, seep away.
It is slower than a leak and harder to find, because the water arrives spread out rather than at a point — which is why damp from seepage is so often traced to the wrong place. Figuratively, news seeps out. Note that the word is a variant of an old verb sipe, meaning to trickle.
1verbseepTo pass slowly through small openings.
“Rainwater had seeped through the cracks in the ceiling and stained the carpet.”
seep is a slow passing through.
Seep is a variant of sipe, from Old English sipian, to trickle, from a root meaning to drip.
Proto-Indo-European
*seyb-
Proto-Germanic
*sipōną
Old English
sipian
Middle English
*sipen
English, today
seep
Built from
Variant of sipe, from Middle English sipen, from Old English sipian, from Proto-Germanic sipōną, derivative of sīpaną, from Proto-Indo-European seyb-, sib- (“to pour out, drip, trickle”). See also Middle Dutch sīpen (“to drip”), German Low German siepern (“to seep”), archaic German seifen (“to trickle blood”); also Latin sēbum (“suet, tallow”), Ancient Greek εἴβω (“to drop, drip”)). See soap.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA