a plant having a permanently woody main stem or trunk, ordinarily growing to a considerable height, and usually developing branches at some distance from the ground.
any of various shrubs, bushes, and plants, as the banana, resembling a tree in form and size.
something resembling a tree in shape, as a clothes tree or a crosstree.
Mathematics, Linguistics. tree diagram.
a pole, post, beam, bar, handle, or the like, as one forming part of some structure.
a saddletree.
a treelike group of crystals, as one forming in an electrolytic cell.
a gallows or gibbet.
the cross on which Christ was crucified.
Computers. a data structure organized like a tree whose nodes store data elements and whose branches represent pointers to other nodes in the tree.
to drive into or up a tree, as a pursued animal or person.
Informal. to put into a difficult position.
to stretch or shape on a tree, as a boot.
to furnish (a structure) with a tree.
any large woody perennial plant with a distinct trunk giving rise to branches or leaves at some distance from the ground
any plant that resembles this but has a trunk not made of wood, such as a palm tree
a wooden post, bar, etc
chem a treelike crystal growth; dendrite
a branching diagrammatic representation of something, such as the grammatical structure of a sentence
( as modifier )
a tree diagram
an archaic word for gallows
archaic the cross on which Christ was crucified
in the highest position of a profession, etc
informal in a difficult situation; trapped or stumped
to drive or force up a tree
to shape or stretch (a shoe) on a shoetree
First recorded before 900; Middle English; Old English trēo(w); cognate with Old Frisian, Old Norse trē, Old Saxon treo, Gothic triu; akin to Greek drŷs “oak,” Sanskrit, Avestan dru “wood”
A tree is a large plant with a trunk, branches, and leaves. If you have an apple tree in your backyard, you'll have apples in the fall — and a nice shady place to sit in the summer. The thick, woody trunk is actually the stem of a tree, and its ability to grow so much taller than other plants evolved partly as a way for trees to absorb more sunlight. Trees do a lot for humans, including providing oxygen, giving us places to climb, producing fruit, shading us, and providing lumber and fuel. As a verb, tree means "chase into a tree," the way your dog might tree the neighbor's cat.
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Brown tree snakes have driven many of Guam's native forest birds to local extinction, and they cause hundreds of power outages each year by climbing utility poles and electrical equipment.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 26, 2026
Planting more drought-tolerant species, improving soil health and increasing tree cover and shade can also make gardens more resilient in the years ahead.
From BBC ● Jul. 25, 2026
Shadow — Jackie’s junior by two years — was spotted Wednesday with a subadult eagle on a favorite perch tree.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 24, 2026
Wisps of smoke rose from charred or crackling tree trunks between Le Porge and the village of Lege-Cap-Ferret to the south, AFP journalists said.
From Barron's ● Jul. 23, 2026
Under the microscope lens, Hooke saw that the tissue inside a cork tree was made up of rows of tiny, boxlike structures.
From "Phineas Gage" by John Fleischman
Both Wisdom Tree and Amplify were willing to talk to me about their experiences so far running these funds.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 24, 2026
Scotland's own KT Tunstall then performed two of her greatest hits, Black Horse & the Cherry Tree and Suddenly I See.
From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026
Tree growth depends on internal water pressure, and that pressure drops quickly during hot, dry conditions.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 9, 2026
So my wife and I built our wind phone in Joshua Tree, in honor of our kids.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 6, 2026
I look up at Olive’s Tree and pray it holds on.
From "Shouting at the Rain" by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
It covered about six square kilometres of heather and small trees at its height, with more than 500 firefighters tackling it.
From BBC ● Jul. 25, 2026
"I can't believe it. Now we don't have noise and all our equipment is still working," Arevalo, 59, told AFP from his food cart parked under the shade of trees in a Queens park.
From Barron's ● Jul. 25, 2026
Along some streets, flies gather near fruit-bearing trees or on parked cars, making it difficult to pass through without swatting at dozens of them in the air.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026
With all that in my backyard, Hayao Miyazaki’s verdant scenery teeming with ancient trees did not look so foreign.
From Salon ● Jul. 22, 2026
I’d plant dozens and dozens of cottonwood trees.
From "Will’s Race for Home" by Jewell Parker Rhodes
The cattle, which were tracked from June to August over two years, had access to 625 acres of grasslands and treed areas ranging in elevation from 600 to 2,028 feet.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 27, 2024
Set in an especially cheerless pocket of Southern California, where high-voltage lines loom over the sparsely treed landscape, it opens in the summer.
From New York Times ● Mar. 2, 2023
Some farmers positioned portable wind breaks and used treed areas to protect their herds from potentially deadly winds, said Karin Schmid, beef production and extension lead at the Alberta Beef Producers industry group.
From Reuters ● Dec. 23, 2022
Officials were alerted to two separate fires Saturday evening in heavily treed areas of the Cedar Canyon Wildlife Management Area and Carter Canyon Public Land.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 2, 2022
When he barked treed a couple of minutes later, it was in the woods the other side of the corn patch.
From "Old Yeller" by Fred Gipson
By 10 a.m. the dogs didn’t appear any closer to treeing whatever it was they were chasing.
From Washington Times ● Apr. 3, 2016
Well-fed raccoons lay trails to nearby trees, which the hounds are allowed to bark up only briefly to minimize sight treeing.
From Time Magazine Archive
Jenkins, the special counsel to the Senate subcommittee investigating the case of Joe McCarthy v. the Army, had the air of an hound treeing an coon.
From Time Magazine Archive
He went to work then, trailing and treeing the squirrels that Little Arliss was scaring up off the ground.
From "Old Yeller" by Fred Gipson
This treeing of energy led in turn to a search for more profitable market crops.
From American Negro Slavery A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime by Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
