pruning

American  

[proo-ning] / ˈpru nɪŋ /

noun

prunings plural

1. the act or practice of cutting or lopping off undesired twigs, branches, or roots.

   Some pruning of your tea roses during the summer is useful to encourage growth and flowers.

2. the act or practice of getting rid of undesirable elements or excess.

   You can do this pruning of emails for an hour a day till you're down to an empty inbox.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• prunings
  plural

Etymology

Origin of pruning

First recorded in 1540–50; prun(e) ² ( def. ) + -ing ¹ ( def. )

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

pruning prunings

Is Microsoft laying off 3,200 employees from the Xbox division just a new boss coming in and pruning an overgrown asset, or is it a sign that console gaming is coming to the end?

From Slate ● Jul. 17, 2026

He’s 72 and does much of the farm work himself, pruning, repairing water lines and applying fertilizer.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026

They’re pruning good investors who had a down year and keeping mediocre ones who got lucky.

From MarketWatch ● May 12, 2026

Instead the final four candidates for the job were a range of eager submissives, each straining to appear enthusiastic to pick up the pruning shears and start cutting rates by the bunch:

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 2, 2026

So off she went, leaving me filling the root cellar with bushel baskets of vegetables, pruning the fruit trees, spreading the compost—getting ready for winter.

From "Schooled" by Gordon Korman

Nearby, prunings from a carrotwood tree lay in a parkway.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 18, 2025

If you have ivy in your garden, please landscape responsibly, and dispose of any ivy prunings carefully, as many a ruined landscape began with unscrupulous gardeners discarding yard waste that included bits of ivy.

From New York Times ● Jan. 20, 2017

The Bucket Jockey is an effective but inexpensive way to organize and easily transport your tools with a bucket for holding your prunings.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 30, 2016

The move mirrors similar prunings around the country at other public colleges and universities that are reeling from steep drops in state aid.

From New York Times ● Dec. 5, 2010

Rubber-tree prunings and sawn rubber trees obtained by thinning-out may be used in mixture with dead wood, provided the logs are stacked to dry in the sun for some weeks before use.

From The Preparation of Plantation Rubber by Morgan, Sidney