gold leaf

American

noun

gold in the form of very thin foil, as for gilding.

gold leaf British

noun

very thin gold sheet with a thickness usually between 0.076 and 0.127 micrometre, produced by rolling or hammering gold and used for gilding woodwork, etc

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

gold-leaf adjective

Etymology

Origin of gold leaf

First recorded in 1720–30

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.

These works are Impressionistic, displaying washes of scenes featuring elements like lily pads and flowers, some of them incorporating gold leaf as an accent in reference to the Japanese kintsugi technique.

From Los Angeles Times

The book jacket was wrapped in dark blue cloth with embroidered gold leaves twisting like vines and a giant bright eight-pointed star at the center.

From Literature

Tiny buds had broken out along some, and gold leaves, hard as the bark, were forming.

From Literature

Carving the intricate statues, which are often adorned with bright paint and gold leaf, was an art he learned from his father as a teenager.

From Barron's

It is made of more than 1,000 handblown coloured glass tiles, each inlaid with gold leaf, echoing the colours of the cathedral's stained-glass windows.

From BBC

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