leech

1. 1.

   draw blood

   “In the old days, doctors routinely bled patients as part of the treatment”

   Synonymsbleedphlebotomizephlebotomise

   Broadertreat

   medicine

Other forms of leech

plural

leeches·

past tense

leeched·

present participle

leeching·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about leech

What does leech mean?

leech means "carnivorous or bloodsucking aquatic or terrestrial worms typically having a sucker at each end". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in leech?

leech has 1 syllable: leech. In IPA it is /ˈlitʃ/.

What is another word for leech?

Close synonyms include bloodsucker, hirudinean, parasite, sponge, sponger. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is leech a common word?

leech is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with leech?

1 word rhymes with leech. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.