sapling
Americannoun
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saplings
plural
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a young tree.
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a young person.
noun
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a young tree
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literary a youth
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of sapling
late Middle English word dating back to 1375–1425; see origin at sap 1, -ling 1
Explanation
A young tree with a slender trunk is known as a sapling. Just as a young duck is called a "duckling," a young tree is called a sapling. The suffix "-ling" comes from Old English and often shows up today at the end of words to mean "young" or "youngster." Brothers and sisters are called siblings. A baby goose is called a gosling. Someone who works under you is called an underling. The way to remember the meaning of sapling is that trees make "sap" — the sweet, sugary liquid that, in sugar maples, gets turned into syrup. A young tree, then, is known as a sapling. One day, it'll make sap.
Vocabulary lists containing sapling
The Secret Life of Bees
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A Thousand Splendid Suns
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Pax
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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:
Tyler and Cora steady a western redbud sapling as Atticus holds up a bag of soil and Eliza shovels out the fragrant earth.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 23, 2026
The very first sapling grown from the Sycamore Gap tree was gifted to His Majesty The King last summer and this will be planted for the nation at a later date, the National Trust said.
From BBC ● Nov. 21, 2025
With increasing urgency, the couple scouted area ponds for suitable release sites, the trick being to find one currently unoccupied by other beavers, with abundant sapling growth as a food supply.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 7, 2025
That syrupy-sweet and shockingly crisp fruit came from an unremarkable sapling that Bedford, then a graduate student, had rescued from the discard pile of a University of Minnesota breeding program.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2025
A squirrel had stripped the bark off a sapling at the foot of the meadow, leaving it gleaming white.
From "My Side of the Mountain" by Jean Craighead George
Regrown forests, especially with monoculture commercial saplings planted rank and file, may never achieve the splendid complexity of virgin forests.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 17, 2026
The seedlings and saplings are mostly knee-high to chest-high and mixed with thickets of ceanothus and other post-fire brush growing amid the true giants that stand dead among them.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 13, 2026
The planting took place within fenced plots, which are designed to protect young saplings.
From BBC ● Mar. 1, 2026
Baimedov, who has become an amateur botanist, tends to about 15,000 saplings, which are aimed at forming a green wall against the sand.
From Barron's ● Dec. 18, 2025
“We’ll do like the Ojibway Indians. We’ll bend saplings from one side to the other to form a dome—a wigwam—and we’ll cover it with bark, just like they did.”
From "On the Far Side of the Mountain" by Jean Craighead George
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.
