: 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
Cut thin strips from the margins of the leaf, removing its spikes.—Karla Marie Sanford, Washington Post, 3 July 2024 Speaking of suckers, there are often questions when growing tomatoes about what to do with the sprouts popping up where the leaf attaches to the main stem.—Dawn Pettinelli, Hartford Courant, 29 June 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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