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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

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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”

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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

But one species that used to be abundant is now scarce, because of deforestation: a small bushy riverside tree called the camu camu.

From Barron's ● Nov. 15, 2026

Leo will also bless and water a tree called a shihuahuaco -- an Amazon species that can live for more than 1,000 years but is prized by loggers.

From Barron's ● Nov. 15, 2026

"It's kind of like if you spend all your water on the one plant, you'll have one great tree and the rest of it will die out," he says.

From BBC ● Nov. 13, 2026

Then he drove his 2009 Cadillac Escalade into a tree, and everything changed.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 13, 2026

Quickly,’ he twisted one leg off the woodgrouse and tucked it into the fork of a birch tree as an offering for his clan guardian; then he settled down to eat.

From "Wolf Brother" by Michelle Paver

The team examined feeding scars and remaining living tissue at the University of Sydney's One Tree Island Research Station, located on the Great Barrier Reef.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 1, 2026

Early this month, investigators searched an Airbnb in Joshua Tree in connection with Downer’s disappearance, according to LAPD.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 31, 2026

Rising living costs threaten discretionary spending by Dollar Tree and Dollar General’s core customers.

From Barron's ● Oct. 23, 2026

"We've all been through changes and hardships that have shaped who we are - I think that's why the Bendy Tree has struck a chord with people."

From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2026

“She’s waiting at the Wishing Tree; it seemed to be the most stable.”

From "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern

To get there, emissions must fall rapidly while carbon is removed from the atmosphere through natural means -- such as planting trees and restoring wetlands -- or emerging technologies.

From Barron's ● Nov. 15, 2026

Fernando Carteiro remembers the good old days when his home in the Peruvian Amazon was lush with wildlife, as lizards darted around on the ground, monkeys frolicked and sloths lazed in thick groves of trees.

From Barron's ● Nov. 15, 2026

“The Department of the Interior has progressed from removing the trees to removing the people from East Potomac Park,” she wrote in the opening line of her 30-page opinion.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 15, 2026

But trees in pots should be brought indoors "as late as possible - the weekend before Christmas is ideal", advises the RHS.

From BBC ● Nov. 14, 2026

Glowing in the twilight, Trey stepped out from between two redbud trees.

From "Legendary Frybread Drive-In" by Cynthia Leitich Smith

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

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

Some farmers positioned portable wind breaks and used treed areas to protect their herds from potentially deadly winds, said Karin Schmid, beef production and extension lead at the Alberta Beef Producers industry group.

From Reuters ● Dec. 23, 2022

“I think she has treed him. Let’s give her time to circle the tree to make sure he’s there.”

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

I never allowed him to run with packs, but generally used him in treeing coon, which pestered the cornfields during roasting-ear season and in the fall.

From The Outlet by Andy Adams

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Related Words

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

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