lf

Noun

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

See all 22 meanings of leaf