leaf
A1Meanings
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1
verb
turn over pages
leaf through a book
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2
noun
hinged or detachable flat section, as of a table or door
We need to add the leaf to the dinner table tonight, since we have so many guests coming.
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3
noun
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.
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4
noun
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.
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5
noun
A sheet of any substance beaten or rolled until very thin.
gold leaf
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6
noun
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[.]
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7
noun
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.
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8
noun
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).
Etymology
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…