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• tree
  tree

  noun

  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.
• Tree
  Tree

  noun

  Sir Herbert Beerbohm Herbert Beerbohm, 1853–1917, English actor and theater manager; brother of Max Beerbohm.

tree

¹ American  

[tree] / tri /

noun

• trees
  plural

1. 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.

2. any of various shrubs, bushes, and plants, as the banana, resembling a tree in form and size.

3. something resembling a tree in shape, as a clothes tree or a crosstree.

4. Mathematics, Linguistics. tree diagram.

5. family tree.

6. a pole, post, beam, bar, handle, or the like, as one forming part of some structure.

7. a shoetree or boot tree.

8. a saddletree.

9. a treelike group of crystals, as one forming in an electrolytic cell.

10. a gallows or gibbet.

11. the cross on which Christ was crucified.

12. Computers. a data structure organized like a tree whose nodes store data elements and whose branches represent pointers to other nodes in the tree.

13. Christmas tree.

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verb (used with object)

• trees,
  present (3rd person singular)
• treed,
  past participle,  past
• treeing
  present participle

1. to drive into or up a tree, as a pursued animal or person.

2. Informal. to put into a difficult position.

3. to stretch or shape on a tree, as a boot.

4. to furnish (a structure) with a tree.

idioms

1. up a tree, in a difficult or embarrassing situation; at a loss; stumped.

Tree ² American  

[tree] / tri /

noun

1. Sir Herbert Beerbohm Herbert Beerbohm, 1853–1917, English actor and theater manager; brother of Max Beerbohm.

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Tree ¹ British  

/ triː /

noun

1. Sir Herbert Beerbohm . 1853–1917, English actor and theatre manager; half-brother of Sir Max Beerbohm. He was noted for his lavish productions of Shakespeare

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tree ² British  

/ triː /

noun

1. any large woody perennial plant with a distinct trunk giving rise to branches or leaves at some distance from the ground

2. any plant that resembles this but has a trunk not made of wood, such as a palm tree

3. a wooden post, bar, etc

4. See family tree shoetree saddletree

5. chem a treelike crystal growth; dendrite

6. 1. a branching diagrammatic representation of something, such as the grammatical structure of a sentence

   2. ( as modifier )

      a tree diagram

7. an archaic word for gallows

8. archaic the cross on which Christ was crucified

9. in the highest position of a profession, etc

10. informal in a difficult situation; trapped or stumped

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verb

1. to drive or force up a tree

2. to shape or stretch (a shoe) on a shoetree

tree Scientific  

/ trē /

1. Any of a wide variety of perennial plants typically having a single woody stem, and usually branches and leaves. Many species of both gymnosperms (notably the conifers) and angiosperms grow in the form of trees. The ancient forests of the Devonian, Mississippian, and Pennsylvanian periods of the Paleozoic Era were dominated by trees belonging to groups of seedless plants such as the lycophytes. The strength and height of trees are made possible by the supportive conductive tissue known as vascular tissue.

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tree More Idioms  

1. see bark up the wrong tree; can't see the forest for the trees; talk someone's arm off (the bark off a tree); up a tree.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• treelessness
  noun
• treeless
  adjective
• treelike
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• trees
  plural

Participles

• treeing
  present
• treed
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• tree
  simple
• trees
  simple
• have treed
  perfect
• has treed
  perfect
• am treeing
  progressive
• are treeing
  progressive
• is treeing
  progressive
• have been treeing
  perfect progressive
• has been treeing
  perfect progressive

Past

• treed
  simple
• had treed
  perfect
• was treeing
  progressive
• were treeing
  progressive
• had been treeing
  perfect progressive

Future

• will tree
  simple
• will have treed
  perfect
• will be treeing
  progressive
• will have been treeing
  perfect progressive

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Etymology

Origin of tree

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”

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Explanation

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.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

tree Tree trees treed treeing

They used two approaches, maximum parsimony and Bayesian tip-dating, to compare anatomical characteristics and reconstruct the species' position on the evolutionary tree.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 24, 2026

One fall I climbed a tree and dropped an apple down to my Dad when he wasn’t expecting it.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 2026

Since 2021, the National Trust said it had planted 125,000 trees and created 35 hectares of woodland and 52 hectares of wood pasture, with another 77 hectares of tree planting currently being designed.

From BBC ● Oct. 21, 2026

Thousands of burned tree trunks stacked neatly to the end of a country block, a mountain range of chipped wood piles rising behind them.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 21, 2026

No Bride of Haarlem tree filled the air with fragrance; only the stump had been too big to haul off for firewood.

From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom

Rising living costs threaten discretionary spending by Dollar Tree and Dollar General’s core customers.

From Barron's ● Oct. 23, 2026

Prince William will visit Ynysowen Community Primary School - which was established to carry forward the legacy of Pantglas Junior School - to unveil an Aberfan Memorial Tree.

From BBC ● Oct. 12, 2026

"We've all been through changes and hardships that have shaped who we are - I think that's why the Bendy Tree has struck a chord with people."

From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2026

Among the most requested books was Betty Smith’s 1943 novel, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2026

And I feel like running out the church door and across our fields, running all the way to where the Maple Tree is so I can help.

From "The Detective's Assistant" by Kate Hannigan

The storms also hit the Netherlands and Belgium, where falling trees injured four people in Brussels on Saturday.

From Barron's ● Oct. 25, 2026

A project is aiming to help restore one of the UK's rare native trees across the Thames Valley using DNA testing.

From BBC ● Oct. 24, 2026

A neighbor’s flowers are blooming, and on Knight’s property, survivor trees include pomegranate, sapote, finger lime, orange and banana.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 24, 2026

There’s something about an apple orchard that’s just suffused with nostalgia, especially if the trees bear heirloom fruits.

From Slate ● Oct. 24, 2026

Spanish moss drapes lazily off the twisted branches of the bald cypress trees.

From "Split the Sky" by Marie Arnold

The treed “Woodland Garden” to the west, with black tupelo and swamp white oaks, gives way to a “Perennial Meadow,” whose asters, purple beebalms and orange butterfly weed were chosen for their chromatic effect.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 24, 2025

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

I told him that they were treed somewhere.

From "Where the Red Fern Grows" by Wilson Rawls

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

Cracked separators permit "treeing" between plates, with a consequent short circuit.

From The Automobile Storage Battery Its Care And Repair by Otto A. Witte

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Related Words

• forest
• sapling
• seedling
• shrub
• timber
• wood

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