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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

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”

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

Our call of the day comes from the investor known as the bond king, Jeffrey Gundlach, who likens stock markets to a hollow tree that’s about to break.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 1, 2026

Reconstructing the bat family tree was particularly difficult because different parts of bat genomes can preserve conflicting signals about their evolutionary history.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 30, 2026

Maya and I spent a lot of time under a pine tree making fairy houses and using our imagination.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 29, 2026

The alarming reptile was “last seen in a tree within a residential neighborhood near Main Street and Edinger Avenue,” according to the department’s warning to the public.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 29, 2026

In an instant he took in a ruined face as rough as tree bark; waist-length hair matted with filth; a rancid cape of slimy yellow reeds.

From "Wolf Brother" by Michelle Paver

Meanwhile, Beachwood Canyon residents David Atrakchi and Sophie Meister, both actors and producers in the film industry, take their Bengal cat, Taita, for hikes near the Hollywood Reservoir, Bronson Canyon and even Joshua Tree.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2026

But he said that as a large buyer of the gas, the company had wider access to suppliers, adding that Dollar Tree already had sufficient balloon supplies for Mother’s Day and spring student graduations.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 30, 2026

Dollar Tree also backed its full-year outlook for net sales of $20.5 billion to $20.7 billion, and for comparable sales to grow 3% to 4%.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 2026

Tree shrews were chosen for the experiments because their eyes have anatomical and optical characteristics that are similar to human eyes.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 26, 2026

Tree and Zheegwon taking turns with their baseball cap every hour.

From "The Marrow Thieves" by Cherie Dimaline

Proponents of the measure say Los Angeles is falling short in providing basic services, including street and sidewalk maintenance, upkeep of streetlights and trees and other services administered by the Department of Public Works.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026

The house had a beautiful view of Puget Sound and was surrounded by trees.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 29, 2026

Meanwhile a coalition led by the Horticultural Trades Association and the Gardens Trust wants trees, plants, gardens and parks to be recognised as essential infrastructure backed by long-term investment.

From BBC ● Sep. 28, 2026

Terpenes such as pinene from pine trees, for example, can participate in reactions that generate tiny airborne particles.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 26, 2026

But he was already way ahead of us, and Marlene was by now no more than a shadowy shape moving through the trees, and then I lost sight of her altogether.

From "An Elephant in the Garden" by Michael Morpurgo

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

The team quickly rallied, secured Ciarlo’s dogs and released their own hounds, which treed a young male they named Orion.

From Seattle Times ● Oct. 1, 2023

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

The next time my dogs treed, they were across the river from us.

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

After supper the guide cut some meat from the cat and fed it to the weary dogs, who had not succeeded in treeing a single lion, though they had come near doing so several times.

From The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon Or, The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch by Frank Gee Patchin

Related Words

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