Etymology From lever + -age. The verb likely comes from martial arts/judo usage, where one would "use an opponent's leverage (i.e. their weight, height, centre of balance, etc.)" against them in order to defeat them.
1
Usually A force compounded by means of a lever rotating around a pivot.
A crowbar uses leverage to pry nails out of wood.
In order to proportion the braking force to the weight carried by a wheel - a matter of special importance in the braking of wagons - variable leverage systems are now being introduced in which the end of one axle spring is linked to a control spring in the change-over valve, so automatically varying the leverage exerted by the brake-rod according to whether the wagon is full or empty.1960 April, “The braking of trains”, in Trains Illustrated, page 237:
2
Broadly, Usually Any influence which is compounded or used to gain an advantage.
Try using competitors’ prices for leverage in the negotiation.
The former Forest man, who passed a late fitness test, appeared to use Guy Moussi for leverage before nodding in David Fox's free-kick at the far post - his 22nd goal of the season.2011 April 15, Saj Chowdhury, “Norwich 2 - 1 Nott'm Forest”, in BBC Sport:
3
Business, FinanceUsually The use of borrowed funds with a contractually determined return to increase the ability to invest and earn an expected higher return, but usually at high risk.
Leverage is great until something goes wrong with your investments and you still have to pay your debts.
Online margin trading is usually based on leverage, where the brokerage effectively lets you borrow more money than you have deposited as collateral.2011, Brian Dolan, Currency Trading For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 55:
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Both exchanges offer crypto derivatives, which are bets on future fluctuations in cryptocurrency prices. They also offer extreme leverage — up to 125 times on Binance. That means a $1,000 down payment can be turned into a $125,000 gamble.2021 July 23, Eric Lipton, Ephrat Livni, “‘I Feel Conflicted’: Crypto’s Offshore Trading Moguls Talk Shop”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
S.E.C. rules cap E.T.F.s from offering more than two times leverage. The nine fund managers who received a letter from the S.E.C. sought to introduce products that offered three and, in some cases, five times leverage.2025 December 5, “Why the Battle for Warner Bros. Discovery May Not Be Over Yet”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:
In such cases where there is a multiple capital structure the factor known as leverage comes into play.1933 June 4, “Trusts Heartened by Security Rally”, in New York Times:
5
BusinessUsually The ability to earn very high returns when operating at high-capacity utilization of a facility.
Their variable-cost-reducing investments have dramatically increased their leverage.
6
Mathematics, Sciences, StatisticsUsually The distance of between an independent observation and other observations.
Etymology From lever + -age. The verb likely comes from martial arts/judo usage, where one would "use an opponent's leverage (i.e. their weight, height, centre of balance, etc.)" against them in order to defeat them.
1
BusinessUS, Slang To use; to exploit; to manipulate in order to take full advantage (of something).
They plan to leverage the publicity into a good distribution agreement.
They plan to leverage off the publicity to get a good distribution agreement.
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EAP research has developed advanced methods for producing corpus-informed vocabulary resources, but these have yet to be fully leveraged to promote disciplinary literacy within the secondary school context.2018, Clarence Green, James Lambert, “Advancing disciplinary literacy through English for academic purposes: Discipline-specific wordlists, collocations and word families for eight secondary subjects”, in Journal of English for Academic Purposes, volume 35, →DOI, page 105:
Catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide (AIR) today announced that Sompo International, a global specialty provider of property and casualty insurance and reinsurance, is leveraging AIR's casualty analytics platform, Arium, to better understand and quantify its liability and loss potential across multiple commercial liability lines of business.2019 June 19, “Sompo International to Leverage AIR's Innovative Casualty Analytics Solution for Multi-Line Risk Analysis”, in CNN Money, archived from the original on 14 May 2025:
Thomas H. Lee, a private equity financier who pioneered the use of leveraged buyouts that helped to reshape corporate America, has died, according to a notice from his former firm that still bears his name.2023 February 24, Chris Isidore, “Thomas H. Lee, pioneer of leveraged buyouts, is dead at 78”, in CNN:
Russian forces continue to prioritize their offensive push towards Pokrovsk, and the operational significance of seizing the city will likely in part depend on the Russian military's ability to leverage the city in wider operational maneuver in Donetsk Oblast.2024 October 3, Riley Bailey, Angelica Evans, Grace Mappes, Davit Gasparyan, Nate Trotter, Frederick W. Kagan, “Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 3, 2024”, in Ukraine Project, Institute for the Study of War: