: a lateral (see lateralentry 1 sense 2) outgrowth from a plant stem that is typically a flattened expanded variably shaped greenish organ, constitutes a unit of the foliage, and functions primarily in food manufacture by photosynthesis
(2)
: a modified leaf (such as a bract or sepal) primarily engaged in functions other than food manufacture
Noun
I heard the rustle of the autumn leaves.
a pile of dead leaves
The trees drop their leaves in the fall, and new leaves grow again in the spring.
The trees have not yet come into leaf. Verb
we must have spent hours leafing through wallpaper books before we found something we both liked
Recent Examples on the Web
Noun
Environmental Management: Keep your lawn well-maintained by mowing regularly and removing leaf litter, tall grass and brush piles where ticks may hide.—Tiffany Acosta, The Arizona Republic, 18 June 2024 Now, some fun arrives to your relationship corner and encourages you to turn over a new leaf.—Steph Koyfman, Condé Nast Traveler, 27 May 2024
Verb
Such a cacophony means that the reader keeps having to leaf back to make sense of the storyline.—Ruth Margalit, The New York Review of Books, 30 Mar. 2023 The trees should leaf out normally.—oregonlive, 11 June 2022 See all Example Sentences for leaf
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'leaf.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Etymology
Noun
Middle English leef, from Old English lēaf; akin to Old High German loub leaf
First Known Use
Noun
before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1a(1)
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