Word.ws English Dictionary

borrow a leaf out of someone's book

borrow a leaf out of someone's book is the alternative form of take a leaf out of someone's book.

Meaning of take a leaf out of someone's book

Verb

take a leaf out of someone's book (third-person singular simple present takes a leaf out of someone's book, present participle taking a leaf out of someone's book, simple past took a leaf out of someone's book, past participle taken a leaf out of someone's book)

  1. (idiomatic) To adopt an idea or practice of another person.
    • Let every youth take a leaf out of my book and make it a point to account for everything that comes into and goes out of his pocket, and like me he is sure to be a gainer in the end.1927, M[ohandas] K[aramchand] Gandhi, chapter XVI, in Mahadev Desai, transl., The Story of My Experiments with Truth: Translated from the Original in Gujarati, volume I, Ahmedabad, Gujarat: Navajivan...

Forms of borrow a leaf out of someone's book

third-person singular presentborrows a leaf out of someone's book
present participleborrowing a leaf out of someone's book
past participleborrowed a leaf out of someone's book
pastborrowed a leaf out of someone's book

Questions about borrow a leaf out of someone's book

What is borrow a leaf out of someone's book the alternative form of?
Borrow a leaf out of someone's book is the alternative form of take a leaf out of someone's book.

Words near borrow a leaf out of someone's book in the dictionary

  1. Borrors
  2. Borroto
  3. Borrotos
  4. Borrovian
  5. borrow
  6. borrow a leaf out of someone's book
  7. borrow a page from someone's book
  8. borrow from Peter to pay Paul
  9. borrow pit
  10. borrow pits
  11. borrow roll

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: borrow a leaf out of someone's book (page history and authors); take a leaf out of someone's book (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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