Why Do We Say “Turn Over A New Leaf”?

If you turn over a new leaf, then you make a fresh start. Often, the phrase implies that in doing so, you turn your back on previous misdemeanors and set yourself on a better path. But exactly what kind of leaf are we talking about here? And why are we turning it over? The literary roots of “turning over a new leaf”Illustration of the Miller's Tale | Hulton Archive/GettyImagesIt might be easy to presume that the leaf in question here is one of the leaves you’d find growing on the branches of bushes and trees. And that presumption might ultimately lead you to think that this phrase is somehow meant to refer to a tree shedding its dead leaves in autumn, and regrowing new ones in the springtime—hence the suggestion of a fresh start. As neat as that idea may be, however, in truth this phrase alludes not to the leaves of trees but to an entirely different kind of leaf altogether. The earliest record of the idiom “turning over a leaf” dates to the turn of the 14th century, when it appeared in a passage from “The Miller’s Tale” in Geoffrey Chaucer’s medieval collection of stories, The Canterbury Tales. In the prologue introducing the miller’s story, Chaucer warns that anyone who does not want to hear what he has to say (“And therfore, whoso list it nat yheere”) should “turn over the leaf” and choose a different tale to read (“Turne over the leef and chese another tale.”) The leaf in question here, therefore, is not the leaf of a tree, but the page of a book. The book-leaf connectionStack of books with autumn leaves on grass in park, closeup | Pixel-Shot / ShutterstockThe pages of books have been figuratively known as leaves since the days of Old English, likely both in reference to their thin, flat shape, and to the fact that there are often vast numbers of them collected together in a book, rather like the collective foliage of a bush or a tree. Chaucer recommending that readers who do not want to know what the miller has been up to “turn over the leaf,” ultimately, is his way of politely requesting that they simply turn the page and ignore the miller’s story altogether. Through its initial allusion to the turning of pages, “turning over a leaf” soon became proverbial in English, and by the late 16th century it had begun to be used more widely in the same context in which it typically appears today: to describe starting a new (and notably better) chapter in a person’s life. The earliest record of someone specifically turning over a new leaf—further emphasizing the idea of a fresh start, and a rejection of what has gone before—dates to 1654.