leafing

Pluralleafings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of leaf.

   The lawyer spent the morning leafing through stacks of case files.

   Leafing through the seed catalog, she circled three varieties of tomato.

   Note

   One spelling carries several different verbs. Used without an object, it means putting out foliage: the birches are leafing early. With an object, it can mean separating a vegetable into its leaves, as in leafing a cabbage. The page-turning use comes with through. As a gerund it shades into the browsing noun, so leafing through a catalog can be read as either verb or noun.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of turning through the pages of something, typically to skim or browse its contents.

   His idle leafing through the brochure stopped at a photo of the mountain lake.

   A few minutes of leafing through the report told her nothing she didn't already know.

   Similarbrowsing, skimming, flipping, flicking, thumbing

   Note

   A noun that can be counted as well as massed. Each pass through a book can be one leafing, and repeated passes become leafings. John le Carré's A Delicate Truth (2013) has details branded on memory by "mindless leafings through the greasy hotel guidebook." The noun keeps its verb's through, and words for idleness, such as idle and mindless, sit naturally in front of it.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The appearance of new leaves on plants as they emerge and unfold.

   The early leafing of the oaks signaled an unusually warm spring.

   A long drought delayed the leafing of the orchard by several weeks.

   Similarvernation

   Note

   The everyday word for what botanists call vernation. It usually takes an of-phrase naming the plant, as in the leafing of the oaks, and it works as a seasonal marker that can be early or late, delayed or advanced. Its verb partner is the form meaning "putting out leaves": trees are leafing, and their leafing can come early.

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