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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.

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.

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Grove ² American  

[grohv] / groʊv /

noun

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

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

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grove British  

/ ɡrəʊv /

noun

1. a small wooded area or plantation

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

   2. ( capital as part of a street name )

      Ladbroke Grove

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Synonym Usage

See forest.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• groved
  adjective
• groveless
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• groves
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of grove

First recorded before 900; Middle English; Old English grāf

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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.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

grove Grove groves

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

Because the fire was burning at a low intensity when it tore through the grove area three days later, park officials were initially hopeful that damage to the trees would be limited.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 2, 2026

At the beginning of August, dozens of people gathered in a druid grove in County Kilkenny to celebrate Lúghnasadh - the start of autumn in the Celtic calendar.

From BBC ● Aug. 31, 2026

The couple kept their eyes locked on each other and sealed their vows with a kiss under a grove of eucalyptus trees.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026

Charlie Parr walked out of the grove and up to the fire.

From "The Teacher’s Funeral" by Richard Peck

The Garden Grove Police Department said in a statement on Friday that the investigation remains ongoing and that it will continue to cooperate with the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 31, 2026

In Decatur, Ga., First Baptist Church on Gresham Road joined a developer on Solace Grove: 125 apartments on a 5.3-acre corner lot it has long owned.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 29, 2026

State Rep. Kristin Robbins, a Republican from the Minneapolis suburb of Maple Grove, draws my attention to the high number of “undecideds” in the polls.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 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

“Have you been to the Grove since?” said Drummle.

From "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens

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

In the summer, we had stood on the shores of the lake, amidst the birch groves, and we had laughed like some new pantheon preparing for Creation.

From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party" by M.T. Anderson

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