leaf

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A usually green, flattened, lateral structure attached to a stem and functioning as a principal organ of photosynthesis and transpiration in most plants.
2. n. A leaflike organ or structure.
3. n. Leaves considered as a group; foliage.
4. n. The state or time of having or showing leaves: trees in full leaf.
5. n. The leaves of a plant used or processed for a specific purpose: large supplies of tobacco leaf.
6. n. Any of the sheets of paper bound in a book, each side of which constitutes a page.
7. n. A very thin sheet of material, especially metal.
8. n. Such leaves considered as a group: covered in gold leaf.
9. n. A hinged or removable section for a table top.
10. n. A hinged or otherwise movable section of a folding door, shutter, or gate.
11. n. One of several metal strips forming a leaf spring.
12. v. To produce leaves; put forth foliage: trees just beginning to leaf.
13. v. To turn pages, as in searching or browsing: leafed through the catalog.
14. v. To turn through the pages of.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. An expanded, usually green, organ of a plant, of transient duration, produced laterally from a stem or branch, and, with others, arranged upon the stem in a definite and symmetrical order. In the most complete sense, a leaf consists of a blade or lamina, the broad, flat portion; a footstalk, leafstalk, or petiole, the linear portion connecting the blade with the stem; and a pair of appendages, the stipules, at the base of the petiole: but often the petiole, and still more often the stipules, are wanting. In any case, leaf very frequently denotes merely the blade, especially with descriptives: as, a cordate, an ovate, a lanceolate leaf, etc. Leaves are simple or compound, according as they have one or several blades. They are distinguished also by the arrangement of their veins. (See nervation.) Physiologically, the normal function of leaves is assimilation—that is, the transformation of inorganic into organic matter, which takes place only in the green parts of the plant. But leaves may be converted to various other uses—for example, into means for the capture and maceration of insects, as in sundew and Venus's fly-trap, or into organs for climbing, as in the pea-vine; and in many other ways leaves depart from the typical description above given.
2. n. Anything resembling a leaf, as in being flat and relatively broad, or in being a flexible or movable attachment or addition to something else. A single thickness of paper in a book or folded sheet; hence, with reference to the words written or printed upon it, the part of a book contained in one of such leaves.
3. n. A separately movable division of a folding or sliding door, fire-screen, table, hinge, etc.
4. n. A very thin sheet of hammered metal; foil: as, gold- leaf.
5. n. A portion of fat lying in a separate fold or layer; especially, the fat about the kidneys of a pig (compare leaf-lard); hence, in local use, the kidney itself.
6. n. A tooth of a pinion, especially when the pinion is small.
7. n. In architecture, an ornament resembling or representing a leaf of a plant; a foliation.
8. n. A flap, as of a hat.
9. n. In tapestry-weaving, one half the threads of the warp. As a preliminary to working a tapestry these leaves are separated, one being brought nearer the workman and the other left in the background.
10. n. In zoology, a leaf-like part or organ. See noseleaf, and compare leaflet, 4.
11. n. A distemper in young lambs caused by feeding on leaves
12. To shoot out leaves; produce foliage: as, the trees leaf in May. Also leave.

Wiktionary

1. n. The usually green and flat organ that represents the most prominent feature of most vegetative plants.
2. n. Anything resembling the leaf of a plant.
3. n. A sheet of any substance beaten or rolled until very thin.
4. n. A sheet of a book, magazine, etc (consisting of two pages, one on each face of the leaf).
5. n. Tea leaves.
6. n. A flat section used to extend the size of a table.
7. n. A moveable panel, e.g. of a bridge or door, originally one that hinged but now also applied to other forms of movement.
8. n. A foliage leaf or any of the many and often considerably different structures it can specialise into.
9. n. In a tree, a node that has no descendants.
10. n. The layer of fat supporting the kidneys of a pig (see also leaf fat)
11. n. permission
12. n. leaf
13. n. page
14. v. To produce leaves; put forth foliage.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A colored, usually green, expansion growing from the side of a stem or rootstock, in which the sap for the use of the plant is elaborated under the influence of light; one of the parts of a plant which collectively constitute its foliage.
2. n. A special organ of vegetation in the form of a lateral outgrowth from the stem, whether appearing as a part of the foliage, or as a cotyledon, a scale, a bract, a spine, or a tendril.
3. n. Something which is like a leaf in being wide and thin and having a flat surface, or in being attached to a larger body by one edge or end
4. n. A part of a book or folded sheet containing two pages upon its opposite sides.
5. n. A side, division, or part, that slides or is hinged, as of window shutters, folding doors, etc.
6. n. The movable side of a table.
7. n. A very thin plate.
8. n. A portion of fat lying in a separate fold or layer.
9. n. One of the teeth of a pinion, especially when small.
10. v. To shoot out leaves; to produce leaves; to leave.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. turn over pages
2. n. hinged or detachable flat section (as of a table or door)
3. n. a sheet of any written or printed material (especially in a manuscript or book)
4. v. look through a book or other written material
5. n. the main organ of photosynthesis and transpiration in higher plants
6. v. produce leaves, of plants