leaf through

Idioms  

1. Turn pages, as in browsing or searching for something. For example, There she sat, leafing through the various catalogs. This expression employs leaf in the sense of “turn over the leaves of a book,” a usage dating from the mid-1600s.

---

Example Sentences

In your own kitchen, leaf through old family cookbooks or memory-laden recipes and see which ones could use a gentle refresh.

From Salon • Dec. 20, 2025

You can leaf through the full list here, with the latest additions shown in bold.

From New York Times • Jan. 19, 2024

Some city ordinances weren’t even indexed, forcing Birch and Karabian to leaf through the longhand lawbooks page by page, wearing special archival gloves.

From Slate • Aug. 31, 2023

At their home in Enniskillen, in County Fermanagh, Pete and Sadie Keogh leaf through the photo album which was put together by his friends and football teammates in Leeds, where he had settled to work.

From BBC • Dec. 28, 2021

I watched Nadia quickly leaf through the book she held in her hand, then go check it out.

From "The View From Saturday" by E.L. Konigsburg

Related Words

• gather
• interpret
• know
• learn
• refer to
• scan
• see
• study
• translate
• view