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Leaf

//liːf// name, noun, verb, slang

Definitions

Proper Noun

1
A surname from Old English.

Noun

1
The usually green and flat organ that represents the most prominent feature of most vegetative plants. countable, uncountable
"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."
2
A Canadian person. Internet, humorous, pejorative, sometimes
3
hinged or detachable flat section (as of a table or door) wordnet
4
A foliage leaf or any of the many and often considerably different structures it can specialise into. countable, uncountable
5
A member of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team, its organization, or its supporters. Canada, slang

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6
a sheet of any written or printed material (especially in a manuscript or book) wordnet
7
Anything resembling the leaf of a plant. countable, uncountable
8
A model of car built by Nissan, with a name chosen for its green connotations.
9
the main organ of photosynthesis and transpiration in higher plants wordnet
10
A sheet of a book, magazine, etc. (consisting of two pages, one on each face of the leaf). countable, uncountable
"Heretofore advertisers have had to buy and pay for a leaf — two pages."
11
A sheet of any substance beaten or rolled until very thin. countable, uncountable
"gold leaf"
12
One of the individual flat or curved strips of metal, typically made of spring steel, that make up a leaf spring. countable, uncountable
"Lumbering down a precipitous "slideway," the Thornycroft broke two main leaves in the back spring[.]"
13
Tea leaves. countable, in-plural, uncountable
14
A flat section used to extend the size of a table. countable, uncountable
15
A moveable panel, e.g. of a bridge or door, originally one that hinged but now also applied to other forms of movement. countable, uncountable
"The train car has one single-leaf and two double-leaf doors per side."
16
In a tree, a node that has no descendants. countable, uncountable
"The algorithm pops the stack to obtain a new current node when there are no more children (when it reaches a leaf)."
17
The layer of fat supporting the kidneys of a pig, leaf fat. countable, uncountable
18
One of the teeth of a pinion, especially when small. countable, uncountable
19
Cannabis. slang, uncountable
20
A Canadian person. Internet, countable, humorous, pejorative, sometimes, uncountable
21
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. countable, uncountable
"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."

Verb

1
To produce leaves; put forth foliage. intransitive
"Then flowered the mead, then leafed all 'Twas caused by the runic lay."
2
produce leaves, of plants wordnet
3
To divide (a vegetable) into separate leaves. transitive
"The lettuce in our burgers is 100% hand-leafed."
4
turn over pages wordnet
5
To play a prank on someone by throwing a large clump or collection of leaves at them. informal, transitive, uncommon

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6
look through a book or other written material wordnet

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English 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 løv (“leaf”), Faroese leyv (“leaf”), Icelandic lauf (“leaf”), Norwegian Bokmål lauv, løv (“leaf”), Norwegian Nynorsk lauv (“leaf”), Swedish löf, 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.

Etymology 2

Etymology 3

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

Etymology 4

From leaf.

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