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  • grove
    grove
    noun
    a small wood or forested area, usually with no undergrowth.
  • Grove
    Grove
    noun
    Sir George, 1820–1900, English musicologist.
Synonyms

grove

1 American  
[grohv] / groʊv /

noun

  • groves
    plural
  1. a small wood or forested area, usually with no undergrowth.

    a grove of pines.

  2. a small orchard or stand of fruit-bearing trees, especially citrus trees.

    a grove of lemon trees.


Grove 2 American  
[grohv] / groʊv /

noun

  1. Sir George, 1820–1900, English musicologist.

  2. Robert Moses Lefty, 1900–75, U.S. baseball player.


grove British  
/ ɡrəʊv /

noun

  1. a small wooded area or plantation

    1. a road lined with houses and often trees, esp in a suburban area

    2. ( capital as part of a street name )

      Ladbroke Grove

"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

Synonym Usage

See forest.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

Inflected Forms

Nouns


Etymology

Origin of grove

First recorded before 900; Middle English; Old English grāf


Explanation

A grove can be an orchard or a clump of trees that doesn't have much undergrowth and occupies a contained area, like an orange grove or a small shady grove of oak trees where you can have a picnic. You wouldn't call a forest or a large woods a grove — that's too big. And you wouldn't call two or three trees a grove either — that's too small. A grove is somewhere in between. You'll often hear the word refer to a group of trees cultivated by humans, often for commercial purposes, such as an apple grove planted to supply produce to grocery stores.

Keep Reading on Vocabulary.com

Vocabulary lists containing grove

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.

See Examples For:

A train operated by the company Iryo, carrying 147 passengers, stopped by an almond grove, its driver awaiting further instructions from a control center.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 29, 2026

In a forest grove to the east, a contractor climbed into a mechanical harvester and pivoted its head to grip and fell a tree, strip its branches and cut the trunk into exact lengths.

From Barron's ● Oct. 26, 2026

It spreads a bacterium—Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus—as it sucks sap from the plants, traveling from grove to grove with little more than a light breeze.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 19, 2026

Viable seeds will be planted and raised in a nursery until the seedlings can be planted in the grove.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 2, 2026

A thousand songbirds greeted us as we walked beneath the open canopy of trees in the oak grove.

From Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles

Their 13-year-old son, Benson, died this spring after hitting a pole in Garden Grove while traveling more than 40 mph, Spitzer’s office said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 21, 2026

In 2019, the town had discovered faulty concrete in Birch Grove Primary School, and needed to rebuild it fast.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026

Meanwhile, back in Tolland, the Birch Grove school is open.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026

The key to family harmony with either of these approaches is to maintain the person’s dignity as much as possible, said Kate Nattoli, a certified dementia practitioner with Crescent Grove Advisors.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 6, 2026

But Goon, the Cedar Grove King Lord with the ponytails, looks at us from the driver’s seat, a gray bandana over his nose and mouth.

From "The Hate U Give" by Angie Thomas

Almost 250 people died, while vineyards, orange groves and plots used to grow Albufera rice, an essential paella ingredient, were decimated.

From Barron's ● Sep. 26, 2026

Plus, Kuehne+Nagel struck a deal with Amazon, and scientists see progress in fighting disease destroying Florida’s orange groves.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 22, 2026

Like the groves and gardens, houses built foolhardily near the dry summertime river risked being pulled off their foundations and washed away by the winter torrents.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2026

They take the olive groves and the goats and the summer houses, and they take the makeshift shelters and the fragile new footing of people who had already lost everything once.

From Salon ● Aug. 5, 2026

As they walked through the groves, Danny kept tripping on stray roots.

From "The Way to Rio Luna" by Zoraida Cordova

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