Main entry: Leave
Noun
Plural: leaves
Etymology: from Old English leaf. Walter Skeat stated: the original [… meaning] of leave is “that which is acceptable or pleasing”.
First definition: act of permitting someone to do something or to behave in a certain manner; permission asked for or granted to do something.
It may be translated by permiso, in Spanish; permission, in French; permesso, in Italian.
***Syntax: to ask, beg, get, grant, have, obtain, crave leave:
Adelaide was at the breakfast-table in season the next morning, but her part in the repast was soon finished; and, asking leave of her Aunt Halliday to retire, the three relations were left to enjoy a private interview.
Azel Roe (A long look ahead)
I mean to ask your good mamma's leave to bring my little darlings to see her.
Maria Gordon (Courtship and wedlock)
The duke […] urging the colonel to speak, he craved leave to speak.
George Smollett (The Critical Review)
At court, and at the different shows and entertainments, I met Sir Aubrey; who, in several tournaments, craved leave to wear my badge and colours. This permission […] I readily granted.
William Bennet (Malpas)
I beg leave to offer myself for any of those expeditions.
Alexander Wilson (American Ornithology)
He applied for leave to go for a day or two […]. It was refused.
Maria Gordon (Courtship and wedlock)
If I choose to send a toad on a trip into the air, I shall do it without asking anybody's leave.
Francis Forrester (Guy Carlton)
[…] he asked leave to examine one of the letters marked private and confidential, which was lying on his table when he arrived
Mrs. Gore (The Banker’s Wife)
I fear I must now ask leave to ring for my carriage.
Mrs. Gore (The Banker’s Wife)
***Syntax: with leave, without leave, by leave, by your leave, etc.:
[…] he sent private emissaries to offer the Danish general a handsome sum of money, with leave to plunder the country along the sea-coast, provided he would retire on board his ships with his forces.
Thomas Mortimer (A New History of England…)
The next day it came out in the evening papers that Private Miles, of the Coldstream Guards, on duty outside Marlborough House, had deserted his post without leave, and was therefore courtmartialed.
Arthur Doyle (The Lost World)
The captain came on board shortly after, and took no notice of my having been absent without leave.
Frederick Marryat (Frank Mildmay)
How dare you walk into a gentleman’s house without leave?
Charles Dickens (Sketches by Boz)
They anchored in the road at this island on the 13th May, and sent their pinnace ashore with a flag of truce to obtain provisions. But the people informed them that, without leave of the governor, they could not trade with them.
Robert Kerr (Voyages and Travels)
[…] any person whatsoever who commits a trespass in the daytime by entering upon any land without leave of the proprietor, in pursuit of, inter alia, deer, is liable to a fine of two pounds.
John Buchan (John Macnab)
No man might cut his own wood without leave of the police
William Howells (Roman Holidays and Others)
He lies buried in the corner of his church-yard, in the parish of. . ., under a plain marble slab, which his friend Eugenius, by leave of his executors, laid upon his grave, with no more than these three words of inscription.
Laurence Sterne (The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy)
Mr. Law, by your leave and by the leave of these gentlemen here present, I shall [… ask] you if there doth occur to your mind any plan by which we may be relieved of certain of these difficulties.
Emerson Hough (The Mississippi Bubble)
Second definition: particularly: leave to absent oneself
Synonym: furlough
***Syntax: leave of absence:
As I could not then get leave of absence from school, my mother with my sister, and little brother, went without me on a visit to my aunt in H—f—shire […]
Walter (My secret life)
***Syntax: on leave: absent from a place by permission
A sub-lieutenant in the Navy, he was home on leave at present.
Arthur Doyle (The Doings of Raffles Haw)
[A girl was] flirting mildly with one of the Sirdar's Bimbashis, on leave from the Soudan.
Guy Boothby (A Professor of Egyptology)
[…] the chance of meeting plenty of young officers over on leave from the front.
Arthur J. Rees (The Hand in the Dark)
Third definition: a formal parting; a departure with a previous farewell. Hence: departure, even without farewelling.
***Syntax: this acceptation is found exclusively in the phrase “to take leave” (literally, to take permission to go). With the preposition of, followed by a noun, designative either of the person, or of the place, from which the leave-taker is departing:
It may be translated by despedirse de alguien, in Spanish; prendre congé de quelqu’un, in French; prendere congedo di qualcuno, in Italian.
In taking leave of me, Mr. B. made a proposition for the purchase of the paper when written.
Edgar Allan Poe
On the 28th of August I finally took my leave of Belfast.
Anne Plumptre (Narrative of a residence in Ireland)
On returning to Dublin from my Southern Tour, nothing remained but to take leave of my Irish friends and depart for England.
Anne Plumptre (Narrative of a residence in Ireland)
[…] these take formal leave of each other.
Charles Sealsfield (Austria as it is)
