Leech

[HORSE-LEECH]

LEECH. See Horse-leech.

LEECH. See Horse-leech.

Part of speech: noun (n.)

See 2d Leach.

Part of speech: noun (n.)

The border or edge at the side of a sail. [Written also leach.] Leech line, a line attached to the leech ropes of sails, passing up through blocks on the yards, to haul the leeches by. Totten. -- Leech rope, that part of the boltrope to which the side of a sail is sewed.

Part of speech: noun (n.)

1. physician or surgeon; a professor of the art of healing. [Written also leach.] [Archaic] Spenser. Leech, heal thyself. Wyclif (Luke iv. 23).

2. Any one of numerous genera and species of annulose worms, belonging to the order Hirudinea, or Bdelloidea, esp. those species used in medicine, as Hirudo medicinalis of Europe, and allied species.

3. A glass tube of peculiar construction, adapted for drawing blood from a scarified part by means of a vacuum. Horse leech, a less powerful European leech (Hæmopis vorax), commonly attacking the membrane that lines the inside of the mouth and nostrils of animals that drink at pools where it lives.

Part of speech: verb (v.)

See Leach, v. t.

Part of speech: verb (v.)

1. To treat as a surgeon; to doctor; as, to leech wounds. [Archaic]

2. To bleed by the use of leeches.