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foliate

fol·i·ate/ˈfoʊliət/adjective, noun, verb

foliate is an adjective meaning “Of or relating to leaves” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-O-L-I-A-T-E and has 3 syllables (fol·i·ate), and it appears about once in every 14 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does foliate mean?

adjective

  1. 1

    Of or relating to leaves.

  2. 2

    Shaped like or otherwise resembling a leaf; leaflike.

  3. 3

    Of a curve: having two infinite branches with a common asymptote, and a leaf-shaped loop.

  4. 4

    Of a plant: having leaves.

  5. 5

    Of a leaf: having a (certain number of) leaflets.

  6. 6

    Synonym of foliated (“of a rock: having a structure of thin layers”).

  7. 7

    obsoleteIn the form of a foil or thin sheet.

    foliate gold

noun

  1. 1

    A logocyclic curve.

verb

  1. 1

    To add numbers to (a folio or leaf, or all the folios or leaves, of a book); also, to add numbers to the folios or leaves of (a book); to folio, to page, to paginate.

  2. 2

    To spread (glass) with a thin coat of mercury and tin, or other substances forming a foil, to create a mirror; to foil, to silver.

    to foliate a looking-glass

  3. 3

    To decorate (an architectural feature, as an arch or window) with foils (“small arcs in the traceries of arches, windows, etc.”).

  4. 4

    obsoleteTo beat (metal) into a foil or thin sheet.

  5. 5

    To split into layers or leaves.

  6. 6

    Of a plant: to produce leaves.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce foliate?

  • UK /ˈfəʊliət/
  • UK /-eɪt/
  • US /ˈfoʊliət/

As a verb (“To add numbers to (a folio or leaf, or all the folios or…”): /ˈfəʊlieɪt/, /ˈfoʊliˌeɪt/.

Foliate has 3 syllables, split fol·i·ate in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-foliate.wav, En-us-SinaSabet28-foliate-verb.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of foliate

  • more foliate comparative
  • most foliate superlative
  • foliates plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • foliating participle, present
  • foliated participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is foliate?

Foliate appears about once in every 14 million words in written English, the 114,361st most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Where does foliate come from?

Learned borrowing from Latin foliātus (“having leaves, leafy, leaved”) (see -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), a participial adjective derived from folium (“leaf; (Late Latin) leaf or sheet of paper”) + -ātus (participial adjective-forming suffix) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₃- (“blossom, flower”) or *dʰelh₁- (“to be green”)).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).