Meaning & use
leaf
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Meanings
nouncountable
A flat, usually green part of a plant that grows from a stem or branch and uses sunlight to make food.
Grammar: Countable with an irregular plural: one leaf, two leaves.
Patterns
- a leaf of something
- leaves on a tree
A single red leaf drifted down onto the path.
Caterpillars had eaten holes in the cabbage leaves.
The leaves turn yellow in October.
nouncountable
A single sheet of paper in a book, counted as two pages, one on each side.
Grammar: Countable; a leaf has two pages, a front and a back.
Patterns
- a leaf of a book
She tore a leaf from her notebook and wrote down the address.
The old Bible has several loose leaves.
A fine thread had sewn each leaf into the spine.
nouncountable or uncountable
A very thin sheet of metal, especially gold or silver, or a hinged or removable flat section of a table or door.
Grammar: Often in compounds: gold leaf, a table leaf.
Patterns
- gold leaf
- a table leaf
The frame was decorated with gold leaf.
We added a leaf to the dining table for the party.
verbphrasal verb
To turn pages quickly and look at them without reading carefully.
Grammar: Usually leaf through something: leaf through a magazine. No object after leaf alone.
Patterns
- leaf through something
She leafed through a magazine while waiting at the dentist.
He leafed through the file looking for the date.
I leafed through the catalog, but nothing caught my eye.
verbintransitive
To produce leaves, as a tree or plant does in spring.
Grammar: No object; often with out: the trees leaf out.
Patterns
- leaf out
The oaks leaf out later than the maples.
The lilac was beginning to leaf.
Word forms
| plural | leaves |
|---|---|
| third person singular | leafs |
| past tense | leafed |
| past participle | leafed |
| -ing form | leafing |
Common combinations
- fallen leaf
- Children jumped in piles of fallen leaves.
- leaf through
- He leafed through the album slowly.
- gold leaf
- The dome was covered in gold leaf.
- tea leaf
- She read the shape of the tea leaves left in the cup.
- turn over a new leaf
- After the argument, he promised to turn over a new leaf.
- leaf blower
- The neighbor's leaf blower woke us at seven.
Synonyms and how they differ
- frond
- Frond is used for the large leaves of palms and ferns, whereas leaf is the general word for any plant's leaf.
- blade
- Blade means a long, narrow leaf, especially of grass, and so is narrower than leaf.
- sheet
- Sheet is the usual word for a piece of paper, while leaf for paper suggests a page in a bound book.
- flick through
- Flick through is the casual British phrasal expression for the verb sense, with a lighter feel than leaf through.
Word family
Commonly confused: leaf or leave? leaf or lief?
leaf vs leave
Leave is a verb meaning to go away or to let something remain; the plural of leaf is leaves, but the verb leave is a separate word that rhymes with 'believe'.
leaf vs lief
Lief is an old word meaning gladly, as in 'I would as lief stay home', and is pronounced the same as leaf.
Practice
While waiting for the bus, she idly ____ through a magazine.
Choose one answer.
Leaf through is the phrasal verb meaning to turn pages without reading closely, so the past form is leafed. Left is a form of leave and would not use through in this way.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “leaf”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.