fade vs leaf

fade

verb
  • To grow weak; to lose strength; to decay; to perish gradually; to wither, as a plant. 

  • To hit the ball with the shot called a fade. 

  • To bet against. 

  • To lose freshness, color, or brightness; to become faint in hue or tint; hence, to be wanting in color. 

  • To sink away; to disappear gradually; to grow dim; to vanish. 

  • To cause to fade. 

noun
  • A haircut where the hair is short or shaved on the sides of the head and longer on top. See also high-top fade and low fade. 

  • The act of disappearing from a place so as not to be found; covert departure. 

  • A golf shot that curves intentionally to the player's right (if they are right-handed) or to the left (if left-handed). 

  • A fight. 

  • A gradual decrease in the brightness of a shot or the volume of sound or music (as a means of cutting to a new scene or starting a new song). 

leaf

verb
  • To produce leaves; put forth foliage. 

  • To divide (a vegetable) into separate leaves. 

noun
  • Anything resembling the leaf of a plant. 

  • A flat section used to extend the size of a table. 

  • One of the teeth of a pinion, especially when small. 

  • The layer of fat supporting the kidneys of a pig, leaf fat. 

  • A Canadian person. 

  • The usually green and flat organ that represents the most prominent feature of most vegetative plants. 

  • A moveable panel, e.g. of a bridge or door, originally one that hinged but now also applied to other forms of movement. 

  • A sheet of any substance beaten or rolled until very thin. 

  • A foliage leaf or any of the many and often considerably different structures it can specialise into. 

  • A sheet of a book, magazine, etc (consisting of two pages, one on each face of the leaf). 

  • Tea leaves. 

  • In a tree, a node that has no descendants. 

  • Cannabis. 

How often have the words fade and leaf occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )