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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

Copernicus observations go back to 1940 but other evidence -- such as ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons -- allow scientists to place today's climate against a much longer historical context.

From Barron's ● Sep. 10, 2026

Ms. Noonan describes 9/11 as a dark ring in the trunk of a tree.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026

While they are still to be fixed, water in the river is again running freely after a multi-agency and community effort saw vital excavations and tree removal take place.

From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2026

He pointed out a tree trunk at the edge of a construction site.

From Slate ● Sep. 8, 2026

You’d find it nailed to a tree or posted on the church door or sent to the Rockville newspaper.

From "The Teacher’s Funeral" by Richard Peck

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

“I say that to say the substitutability at Dollar Tree is second to none,” the CEO added.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 30, 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

The Wicker Tree, released in 2011, brought him closer to that ambition, but his death in 2016 at the age of 86 left the project incomplete.

From BBC ● Aug. 23, 2026

The Glimourie Tree grows in a cavern, deep in the warmth of the earth; he cut the maze into the rock.

From "Impossible Creatures" by Katherine Rundell

"The area is covered mainly by casuarina trees and is not a dense forest. It is also close to a state highway."

From BBC ● Sep. 9, 2026

Only pine trees and rock faces are visible as you approach it by boat.

From Slate ● Sep. 8, 2026

The opening match there was held in Deir al-Balah between Khadamat Rafah and Shabab Rafah as fans sat on plastic chairs around the small field lined with palm trees.

From Barron's ● Sep. 6, 2026

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

He could even see the place directly west, where the emerald light deepened into a shade so dense, it blotted out the trees.

From "The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest" by Aubrey Hartman

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

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

Scared and knowing I had to do something, I said, “They’re closer than you think, probably treed by now. You can’t hear them for this wind.”

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

The fact of him treeing for Turk don't prove that he's afraid of a Dog; lots of animals does that 'cause they don't want to be bothered with his noise.

From Two Little Savages Being the adventures of two boys who lived as Indians and what they learned by Ernest Thompson Seton

Related Words

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