Definition of "leverage"

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

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

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, page 55

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

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

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, page 105