Word.ws English Dictionary

leaf

UK/liːf//lif/

leaf noun: the usually green and flat organ that represents the most prominent feature of most vegetative plants.

leaf: the usually green and flat organ that represents the most prominent feature of most vegetative...
Image: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

leaf (countable and uncountable, plural leaves)

  1. The usually green and flat organ that represents the most prominent feature of most vegetative plants.
    • Earless ghost swift moths become “invisible” to echolocating bats by forming mating clusters close (less than half a meter) above vegetation and effectively blending into the clutter of echoes that the bat receives from the leaves and stems around them.2013 May-June, William E. Conner, “An Acoustic Arms Race”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, pages 206–7
  2. A foliage leaf or any of the many and often considerably different structures it can specialise into.
  3. Anything resembling the leaf of a plant.
  4. A sheet of a book, magazine, etc. (consisting of two pages, one on each face of the leaf).
    • Heretofore advertisers have had to buy and pay for a leaf — two pages.1900, Profitable Advertising, volume 10, number 2, page 893
  5. A sheet of any substance beaten or rolled until very thin.
    • gold leaf
    Synonyms:
    folio, folium
  6. One of the individual flat or curved strips of metal, typically made of spring steel, that make up a leaf spring.
    • Lumbering down a precipitous "slideway," the Thornycroft broke two main leaves in the back spring[.]1931, Ion L. Idriess, Lasseter's Last Ride, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 52
  7. (in plural) Tea leaves.
  8. A flat section used to extend the size of a table.
  9. (plural leaves or leafs) A moveable panel, e.g. of a bridge or door, originally one that hinged but now also applied to other forms of movement.
    • The train car has one single-leaf and two double-leaf doors per side.
    • The bridge shear locks were repaired and the long ends of the shear locks shortened about two inches to eliminate butting of the bridge leafs against each other.1914, Department of Bridges, City of New York, Report, page 90
  10. In a tree, a node that has no descendants.
    • The algorithm pops the stack to obtain a new current node when there are no more children (when it reaches a leaf).2011, John Mongan, Noah Kindler, Eric Giguère, Programming Interviews Exposed
  11. The layer of fat supporting the kidneys of a pig, leaf fat.
  12. One of the teeth of a pinion, especially when small.
Show 3 more meaningsShow fewer meanings
  1. (slang, uncountable) Cannabis.
  2. (Internet, humorous, pejorative, sometimes, 4chan slang, plural leafs) A Canadian person.
  3. A particular value of the EAX register when a program runs the CPUID instruction; each leaf represents a different category of information returned about the processor.
    • X86_FEATURE_HETERO_CORE_TOPOLOGY is used to identify whether the processor support heterogeneous core type by reading CPUID leaf Fn_0x80000026_EAX and bit 30. if the bit is set as one, then amd_pstate driver will check EBX 30:28 bits to get the core type.2024 May 7, Perry Yuan, “[PATCH 00/11] AMD Pstate Driver Fixes and Improvements”, in Kernel Lore

Verb

leaf (third-person singular simple present leafs, present participle leafing, simple past and past participle leafed)

  1. (intransitive) To produce leaves; put forth foliage.
    • Then flowered the mead, then leafed all
      'Twas caused by the runic lay.1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume I, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 164
  2. (transitive) To divide (a vegetable) into separate leaves.
    • The lettuce in our burgers is 100% hand-leafed.
  3. (informal, transitive, uncommon) To play a prank on someone by throwing a large clump or collection of leaves at them.

Proper noun capitalized: Leaf

Leaf (plural Leafs)

  1. A surname from Old English.

Noun (2) capitalized: Leaf

Leaf (plural Leafs)

  1. (Internet, humorous, pejorative, sometimes) A Canadian person.
  2. (Canada, slang) A member of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team, its organization, or its supporters.
  3. A model of car built by Nissan, with a name chosen for its green connotations.

leaf meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

leaf in Hindi

part of a plant
पत्ता pattā, पत्ती pattī
sheet of a book
पन्ना pannā
sheet of any substance beaten or rolled until very thin
पत्ती pattī
moveable panel of a bridge or door
पल्ला pallā

leaf in Tamil

part of a plant
இலை ilai

leaf in Marathi

part of a plant
पर्ण parṇa, पत्र patra, दल dal

leaf in Urdu

part of a plant
پَتّی pattī, بَرْگ barg
More languagesFewer languages
leaf in Bengali
পাতা pata
leaf in Telugu
ఆకు āku, పత్రం patraṁ
leaf in Malayalam
ഇല ila
leaf in Kannada
ಎಲೆ ele
leaf in Punjabi
ਪੱਤਾ pattā
leaf in Gujarati
પાન pān, પર્ણ parṇ, પાંદડું pā̃dḍũ, દલ dal
leaf in Odia
ପତ୍ର patra
leaf in Sanskrit
पर्ण parṇá, पत्र patra
leaf in Sinhala
කොළේ koḷē, කොළය koḷaya
leaf in Assamese
পাত pat
leaf in Nepali
पात pāt
leaf in Pashto
پاڼه pâṇa
leaf in Tagalog
dahon, pahina
leaf in Arabic
وَرَقَة waraqa, وَرَقة waraga, صَحِيفَة ṣaḥīfa
leaf in Malay
daun, dedaun
leaf in Indonesian
daun
leaf in Persian
بَرْگ barg, پَر par, برگ barg
leaf in Thai
ใบ bai, ใบไม้ bai-máai
leaf in Vietnamese
lá
leaf in Myanmar
အရွက် a.rwak
Sindhi
پَنُ panu

Examples of leaf in a sentence

  • This is desirable because the load on the leafs is the greatest when they are closed due to air pressure.1992 July 21, William R. Kennedy, John M. Kennedy, Power mine door system, US Patent 5,222,838:
  • The hydraulic system lifts and rotates two 413-ft (126-m) bridge leafs, each weighing 7,500 tons, in just four minutes.1993, The Americana Annual: An Encyclopedia of Current Events, Grolier, →ISBN, →ISSN, →LCCN, page 224:
  • Note the Art Deco-style sculptures on the wall of the bridge house showing a ship passing under the raised bridge leafs.1996, Gerard R. Wolfe, Chicago in and Around the Loop: Walking Tours of Architecture and History, McGraw-Hill, →ISBN, page 150:
  • Like I’ve said, John, you’ve got to get the two bridge leafs to come down very slowly to a complete stop in order to trigger the tongue locks.2010, James Newport-Chiakulas, Bridges to Justice: Love, Murder, & Politics in Chicago, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 55:

All 40 example sentences with leaf

Synonyms of leaf

Forms of leaf

Noun
pluralleaves
pluralLeafs
Verb
third-person singular presentleafs
present participleleafing
past participleleafed
pastleafed
Proper noun
pluralLeafs
alternative formLife

Plural of leaf: leaves

Origin of leaf

From Middle English lef, leef, from Old English lēaf, from Proto-West Germanic *laub, from Proto-Germanic *laubą (“leaf”), from Proto-Indo-European *lowbʰ-o-m, from *lewbʰ- (“to cut off”). Cognates Cognate with Scots leaf (“leaf”), Yola laafe (“leaf”), North Frisian luuf (“leaf”), Saterland Frisian Loof (“leaf”), West Frisian leaf (“leaf”), Cimbrian loap (“leaf”), Dutch loof (“foliage”), German Laub (“leaves”), German Low German Loov (“leaf”), Luxembourgish Laf (“foliage, leaves”), Mòcheno lap (“leaf”), Vilamovian łaub, łaup, łojp (“leaf”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål løv (“leaf”), Faroese leyv (“leaf”), Icelandic lauf (“leaf”), Norwegian Nynorsk lauv (“leaf”), Swedish löv (“leaf”), Gothic 𐌻𐌰𐌿𐍆𐍃 (laufs, “leaf”); also Irish luibh (“herb, plant”), Latin liber (“bast; book”), Albanian labë (“rind”), Lithuanian lúobas (“bark; bast”), Polish łub (“bark”), Russian луб (lub, “bast”). (Internet slang: Canadian): In reference to the maple leaf as national symbol.

From the Old English personal names Lēofa and Lēofe, both from lēof (“dear, beloved”).

From the maple leaf depicted on Canada's flag.

Words formed from leaf

Phrases with leaf

169 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with leaf

17 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about leaf

What does leaf mean?
Leaf means the usually green and flat organ that represents the most prominent feature of most vegetative plants.
What is leaf in Hindi?
Leaf in Hindi is पत्ता (pattā), पत्ती (pattī), पन्ना (pannā). See Leaf meaning in Hindi.
How do you use leaf in a sentence?
This is desirable because the load on the leafs is the greatest when they are closed due to air pressure.
What part of speech is leaf?
Leaf can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce leaf?
Leaf is pronounced /liːf/ (UK).
What is the plural of leaf?
The plural of leaf is leaves.

Words near leaf in the dictionary

  1. leadwort
  2. leadworts
  3. leady
  4. leadzyme
  5. leadzymes
  6. leaf
  7. leaf aphid
  8. leaf aphids
  9. leaf arrowhead
  10. leaf arrowheads
  11. leaf beetle

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: leaf (page history and authors); Leaf (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-leaf.ogg.

Cite this entry: “leaf.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/leaf. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.