Leaf

How to spell leaf

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce leaf

What does leaf mean?

1. nounA flat, usually green structure growing from the stem or branch of a plant.
2. nounA single sheet of paper in a book or notebook, each side forming a page.
3. verbTo turn the pages of a book or document quickly and casually.
4. nounA hinged or removable section added to extend the surface of a table.

Leaf in a sentence

• noun

  A single leaf drifted onto the windscreen during the drive home.

• noun

  A leaf had been torn from the old ledger before it was filed.

• verb

  He liked to leaf through old magazines in the waiting room.

• noun

  They added a leaf to the dining table to seat the extra guests.

• noun

  She pressed a maple leaf between the pages to dry it.

• noun

  The manuscript was missing a leaf from the final chapter.

Where does leaf come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Leaf is a native English word, descending directly from the Old English 'leaf', which referred to the foliage of a plant and, intriguingly, also to a sheet or page of a book. It traces back to the reconstructed Germanic ancestor 'laubam', the same source that gave German its 'Laub' (foliage) and Dutch its 'loof'. The link between a plant's leaf and a page of paper is no accident: both are thin, flat sheets, and the word carried that double meaning long before printing existed. The plural 'leaves', with its f-to-v shift, preserves an old Germanic pattern also seen in 'loaf' and 'loaves' or 'wife' and 'wives'. Because the word has stayed close to its roots for over a thousand years, the spelling is straightforward apart from the 'ea' vowel team standing for a long 'e' sound.

How the word is built

• leaf (whole, indivisible root from Old English leaf)