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

We are keenly aware of Mr. Lucas’s pride and delight in each acquisition, and he lets us see them, one after another, just as a stamp collector might leaf through his album.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 16, 2026

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

"Ah, this is it," he says as he begins to leaf through.

From BBC ● Oct. 16, 2023

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

I used to leaf through her book, reading only the footnotes, trying to memorize all those big definitions, trying to understand her indecipherable language.

From "The Science of Breakable Things" by Tae Keller

Related Words

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