grove
noun
a small wood or forested area, usually with no undergrowth.
grove
1 American
[grohv]
/ groʊv /
noun
-
groves
plural
-
a small wood or forested area, usually with no undergrowth.
a grove of pines.
-
a small orchard or stand of fruit-bearing trees, especially citrus trees.
a grove of lemon trees.
Grove
2
American
[grohv]
/ groʊv /
noun
-
Sir George, 1820–1900, English musicologist.
-
Robert Moses Lefty, 1900–75, U.S. baseball player.
grove
British
/ ɡrəʊv /
noun
-
a small wooded area or plantation
-
-
a road lined with houses and often trees, esp in a suburban area
-
( capital as part of a street name )
Ladbroke Grove
-
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.
Vocabulary lists containing grove
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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
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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:
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
Satellite images show tank tracks and destroyed structures in the area, with an olive grove more than 500m beyond the Yellow Line apparently torn down.
From BBC ● Jul. 30, 2026
David Sanchez, a 48-year-old painter and decorator, had just returned home to Cebreros after evacuating at the weekend to find that his small olive and pistachio grove had been consumed by the inferno.
From Barron's ● Jul. 27, 2026
We meet on a cloudy afternoon at the palace, a neo-Byzantine structure in a grove on the outskirts of Sofia.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 6, 2026
By the time we reached the hidden grove, Quinby was working hard to escape the wheelbarrow.
From "Willodeen" by Katherine Applegate
Production at GKN's Garden Grove facility currently remains hobbled, at roughly 50% of normal, according to public statements, external by its UK parent company Melrose Industries.
From BBC ● Sep. 15, 2026
In 2024, the Perlmans sued the dealer, Leslie Roberts, who sold them the works out of his storefront in the affluent Miami neighborhood of Coconut Grove.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 12, 2026
How Caruso’s team operates “the Grove, the Americana and this,” Chipman said, “that was what L.A. should be.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 9, 2026
A 20-year-old man, Diego Farquharson, of Birchen Grove, Brent, has been charged with assisting an offender and is due to appear before magistrates on Monday.
From BBC ● Aug. 30, 2026
In a letter to Grove, White wrote, “I am hoping that all the good luck in the world will come our way from a good publisher,” adding that he would be keeping his fingers crossed.
From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann
Danger lurked in the shady groves of avocado trees that stretched on the mountainsides as far as the eye could see.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 6, 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
Hundreds of firefighters battled a blaze near Valpaços in northern Portugal that has torn through 15,000 hectares including vineyards and olive groves, news agency Lusa reported, citing officials.
From BBC ● Jul. 31, 2026
The researchers also estimated that another 3,900 trees might have survived if every sequoia in the affected groves had received similar treatment.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 26, 2026
From my earliest childhood I’ve felt that something was going on in the groves, something of which I was not a part.
From "Travels with Charley in Search of America" by John Steinbeck
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.
