Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To propel oneself quickly upward or a long way; spring or jump.
  • intransitive verb To move quickly or suddenly.
  • intransitive verb To change quickly or abruptly from one condition or subject to another.
  • intransitive verb To act quickly or impulsively.
  • intransitive verb To enter eagerly into an activity; plunge.
  • intransitive verb To propel oneself over.
  • intransitive verb To cause to leap.
  • noun The act of leaping; a jump.
  • noun A place jumped over or from.
  • noun The distance cleared in a leap.
  • noun An abrupt or precipitous passage, shift, or transition.
  • idiom (by leaps and bounds) Very quickly.
  • idiom (leap in the dark) An act whose consequences cannot be predicted.
  • idiom (leap of faith) The act or an instance of believing or trusting in something intangible or incapable of being proved.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A basket.
  • noun A trap or snare for fish.
  • noun Half a bushel.
  • noun The act or an act of leaping; a jump; a spring; a bound.
  • noun The act of copulating with or covering a female: said of certain beasts.
  • noun In music, a passing from any tone to one that is two or more diatonic steps distant from it.
  • noun In mining, a fault or break in the strata.
  • To spring clear of the ground or of any point of rest; pass through space by force of an initial bound or impulse; spring; jump; vault; bound.
  • To move with springs or bounds; start suddenly or with quick motion; make a spring or bound; shoot or spring out or up.
  • To go; travel. Compare landleaper.
  • In music, to pass from any tone to one that is two or more diatonic steps distant from it.
  • To pass over by leaping; jump over; spring or bound from one side to the other of: as, to leap a wall.
  • To copulate with; cover: said of the males of certain beasts.
  • To cause to take a leap; cause to pass by Leaping.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To pass over by a leap or jump.
  • transitive verb To copulate with (a female beast); to cover.
  • transitive verb To cause to leap.
  • noun The act of leaping, or the space passed by leaping; a jump; a spring; a bound.
  • noun Copulation with, or coverture of, a female beast.
  • noun (Mining) A fault.
  • noun (Mus.) A passing from one note to another by an interval, especially by a long one, or by one including several other and intermediate intervals.
  • intransitive verb To spring clear of the ground, with the feet; to jump; to vault.
  • intransitive verb To spring or move suddenly, as by a jump or by jumps; to bound; to move swiftly. Also Fig.
  • noun obsolete A basket.
  • noun Prov. Eng. A weel or wicker trap for fish.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • initialism Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol
  • verb intransitive To jump from one location to another.
  • noun The act of leaping or jumping.
  • noun The distance traversed by a leap or jump.
  • noun figuratively A significant move forward.
  • noun mining A fault.
  • noun Copulation with, or coverture of, a female beast.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English lepen, from Old English hlēapan.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English lepen, from Old English hlēapan, from Proto-Germanic *hlaupanan (compare Dutch lopen ‘to stroll, go for a walk’, German laufen ‘to run’, Danish løbe), from Proto-Indo-European (compare Lithuanian šlùbti ‘to become lame’, klùbti ‘to stumble’).

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Examples

Comments

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  • A traditional Welsh unit of distance equal to 6 feet 9 inches or 2.0574 meters.

    November 8, 2007

  • The Welsh are a great race of leapers. It comes from living in valleys, you see. They're always leaping from one side to the other.

    November 8, 2007

  • And of course the leaps are precisely 2.0574 meters. ;-)

    November 8, 2007