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.
any of various shrubs, bushes, and plants, as the banana, resembling a tree in form and size.
something resembling a tree in shape, as a clothes tree or a crosstree.
Mathematics, Linguistics. tree diagram.
a pole, post, beam, bar, handle, or the like, as one forming part of some structure.
a saddletree.
a treelike group of crystals, as one forming in an electrolytic cell.
a gallows or gibbet.
the cross on which Christ was crucified.
Computers. a data structure organized like a tree whose nodes store data elements and whose branches represent pointers to other nodes in the tree.
to drive into or up a tree, as a pursued animal or person.
Informal. to put into a difficult position.
to stretch or shape on a tree, as a boot.
to furnish (a structure) with a tree.
any large woody perennial plant with a distinct trunk giving rise to branches or leaves at some distance from the ground
any plant that resembles this but has a trunk not made of wood, such as a palm tree
a wooden post, bar, etc
chem a treelike crystal growth; dendrite
a branching diagrammatic representation of something, such as the grammatical structure of a sentence
( as modifier )
a tree diagram
an archaic word for gallows
archaic the cross on which Christ was crucified
in the highest position of a profession, etc
informal in a difficult situation; trapped or stumped
to drive or force up a tree
to shape or stretch (a shoe) on a shoetree
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”
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.
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Boreal forests are also supposed to burn on an infrequent basis, in order to open up certain pine cones and spread their seeds, or to clear out lower tree branches.
From Slate ● Jul. 21, 2026
Nick Araya and Paloma Minuz-Ochoa climb a tree at a community event advocating against the Pasadena School District felling nearly 200 trees.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 19, 2026
A newly identified branch of the marsupial family tree is adding a surprising twist to the history of Australia's most distinctive mammals.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 19, 2026
Under good weather conditions, he said, a single apricot tree can yield up to 500 kilograms.
From Barron's ● Jul. 14, 2026
The branches of every tree cracked and moaned, straining against Pain’s rage.
From "The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest" by Aubrey Hartman
Tree growth depends on internal water pressure, and that pressure drops quickly during hot, dry conditions.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 9, 2026
Scientists believe that the magnitude 6.1 Joshua Tree temblor of April 22, 1992, resulted in aftershocks that kept migrating north.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 26, 2026
Many parents save their own PTO for the summer, but, according to a 2025 Lending Tree survey, almost two-thirds take on debt each year to pay for summer activities.
From Salon ● Jun. 24, 2026
Tree and five others died in a helicopter crash over Rio de Janeiro last week, when it collided with another helicopter.
From BBC ● Jun. 22, 2026
“She’s waiting at the Wishing Tree; it seemed to be the most stable.”
From "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern
Towed artillery is easier to hide among trees and camouflage, and doesn’t give off the same heat signature, making it easier to hide from drones.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 21, 2026
Worse, burned trees release the carbon they were storing, then destroy other plant life that could keep that carbon absorbed.
From Slate ● Jul. 21, 2026
These trees "need natural disturbances such as fires," according to the government department Environment Canada, but suffer from repeated, intense fires that prevent them from regenerating.
From Barron's ● Jul. 20, 2026
Sauropods were plant eaters, so rising onto their hind legs may have allowed them to reach vegetation high in trees that was unavailable to shorter animals.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 20, 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
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
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
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
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
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 duties of separators are to prevent the plates from touching each other, and to prevent "treeing," or growth of active material from the negative to the positive plates.
From The Automobile Storage Battery Its Care And Repair by Witte, Otto A.
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.
