leaf
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "leaf", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "leaf" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "leaf" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
leaf is aEnglishnoun. It means: The usually green and flat organ that represents the most prominent feature of most vegetative plants. Pronounced /liːf/. It ranks #4,958 in English word frequency. Often confused with LF and let.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | leaf |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /liːf/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #4,958 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for leaf is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /liːf/. Corpus data places it at rank #4,958 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 15 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for leaf, with forms such as "elaf", "laef", and "leaff". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "LF", "let", "LED", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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 Fri… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is leaf, spelled L-E-A-F, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The usually green and flat organ that represents the most prominent feature of most vegetative plants.
- 2A foliage leaf or any of the many and often considerably different structures it can specialise into.
- 3Anything resembling the leaf of a plant.
- 4A sheet of a book, magazine, etc. (consisting of two pages, one on each face of the leaf).
- 5A sheet of any substance beaten or rolled until very thin.
- 6One of the individual flat or curved strips of metal, typically made of spring steel, that make up a leaf spring.
- 7Tea leaves.
- 8A flat section used to extend the size of a table.
- 9A moveable panel, e.g. of a bridge or door, originally one that hinged but now also applied to other forms of movement.
- 10In a tree, a node that has no descendants.
- 11The layer of fat supporting the kidneys of a pig, leaf fat.
- 12One of the teeth of a pinion, especially when small.
- 13Cannabis.
- 14A Canadian person.
- 15A 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.
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 (“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.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: elaf,laef,leaff,lefa,lleaf
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for leaf
Misspelling Variants of "leaf"
Frequency rank: #4,958 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: