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.

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

leaf through

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

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

As the owners, they can listen to the 31 tracks on its two CDs, ogle its engraved nickel-silver box and leaf through the leather-bound parchment book that are part of the item’s overall package.

From New York Times ● Oct. 20, 2021

I leaf through the newspaper to the calendar section.

From "If I Stay" by Gayle Forman

Related Words

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