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Synonyms

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

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

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

I leaf through the newspaper to the calendar section.

From "If I Stay" by Gayle Forman

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.