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

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

Carefully, diligently, Vanna Marangoni dons her white gloves: a guardian of memory, ready to leaf through the archives of her husband's life.

From BBC • Jun. 25, 2022

We still neatly package misery for students, leaving it as something to stumble upon as they leaf through files, as if it's as ordinary as a rule of civil procedure or a trespassing statute.

From Salon • Jan. 23, 2022

Hornet avoided the question and grabbed one of the books she had taken from Ida's shelf and started to leaf through it.

From "The Thief Lord" by Cornelia Funke

Related Words

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