take a leak/have a leak

leak | American Dictionary

leak
verb[ I/T ]
us/lik/
(of a liquid or gas) to escape from a hole or crack in a pipe or container, or (of a container) to allow liquid or gas to escape:
[ I ]He heard the sound of dripping and saw water leaking from a pipe overhead.
[ T ]The ship ran aground off the coast and began to leak oil.
To leak is also to give out information privately, esp. when people in authority do not want it to be known:
[ T ]Someone had leaked the news of the ambassador’s resignation to the press.

leaky

adjective[ -er/-est only ]us/ˈli·ki/
There’s a leaky radiator in the bedroom.
leak
noun[ C ]
us/lik/
A leak is also the act of giving out information privately, esp. when people in authority do not want it to be known:
The Justice Department was investigating security leaks.

leak | Business English

leak
verb
uk /liːk/us
[ I or T ]
if a liquid or gas leaks, or is allowed to leak, from a pipe or container, it escapes through an opening:
Textile chemicals leaking from a container started a fire in a cargo compartment.
The ship leaked an estimated 70,000 gallons of fuel.
[ T ]
to allow secret information to become generally known:
Staff members were accused of leaking information about the deal to the newspapers.
leak
noun[ C ]
uk /liːk/us
an opening through which liquid or gas can escape from a pipe or container, or the liquid or gas that escapes:
fuel/gas/oil leaks
the act of allowing secret information to become publicly known:
The leak of the top-secret discussions will be a huge embarrassment to the company.

Examples of leak

leak
These dynamic features will ultimately relate to the outcome of a residual leak.
Without a spine, space leaks of the form considered here are not possible.
All heap memory space leaks were plugged by adding releases.
These calculi always leak somewhere - otherwise why so many variants?
It is likely that the leak had occurred shortly after completion of the first operation, leading to the formation of the observed supraclavicular haematoma.
The leak currents were not subtracted from the data.
However, there are still paths in the function such that untrustworthy information may leak through if the function is called with untrustworthy arguments.
But such information did on occasion leak out and become public property and news.
Clearly the crown was trying to limit the amount of information leaking out about the trial.
The reason for this not too infrequent occurrence was traced to leaking nozzle seals or pressure holes or to damage on the flat-plate leading edge.
It seems impossible, however, to prevent all information about the implementation of an abstract type leaking out.
If the typing is made pure linear instead of affine, we could also prevent space leaks.
Pieces of the false keel floated to the surface, but the ship was quickly refloated and found not to be leaking.
In reactive and concurrent programs, intermediate states are visible and synchronization can be used, deliberately or accidentally, to leak information.
In this study, leaks were detectable on magnetic resonance imaging only by theflow-sensitivegradient-echo technique.
See all examples of leak
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.