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Glite Dictionary
📄 A small flyer ❤️ Valve flap 🌱 Part of a leaf 🤲 To hand out flyers
leaflet

leaflet

1 5.1
A single part of a compound leaf that shares a stalk with others
  • noun
  • /ˈliːflɪt/
  • Specialized
translation icon : folíolo
  • Photos (4): When the wind picks up, the leaflets of a black locust roll together to form a single cylinder.
  • bear leaflets
  • spore-bearing leaflet

Examples

  • Another tree, lapalapa, has leaflets borne in clusters of three, which not only resemble leaves of quaking aspen but also quake with the slightest breeze.

    Academic text (1995)

  • Another surprise came when I tested compound leaves with leaflets arrayed in rows on either side of a central stem.

    Academic text (1993)

  • Entomologist Robert Pemberton examines a spore-bearing leaflet of the Old World climbing fern.

    Academic text (2000)

  • What I do know is that the plant is an herbaceous annual with opposite, palmately divided leaves of five to seven leaflets that are coarsely toothed.

    Blog text (18)

  • Roses have compound leaves that are composed of smaller leaflets.

  • Poison ivy has three almond-shaped leaflets, light green to red in color, often found near a water source.

  • The pale green leaves are composed of three leaflets, similar to clover.

Surface Forms

leaflet singular
leaflets plural

Morphology

leaflet = leaf (transparent) = leaf + let

The botanical sense is a straightforward diminutive/partitive: a small or partial 'leaf' (leaf + -let).

Etymology

Leaflet comes from leaf and the small ending -let, which means 'small'. So a leaflet is literally a 'small leaf', the single segment of a compound leaf.