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.
Haggling is also a skill many tradespeople are having to master, with a Cardiff-based tree surgeon saying customers question his fixed prices every day.
From BBC • May 10, 2026
Cooperative breeding is a strategy that’s arisen across the tree of life.
From Slate • May 10, 2026
Altadena Green began conducting property tree surveys to help residents understand which damaged trees would probably survive and how to take care of them.
From Los Angeles Times • May 7, 2026
Grounding these dramatic acrobatics is that tree, which we first meet a decade or so shy of its 200th birthday, in a section set just before and then during the Covid-19 pandemic.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 7, 2026
She reached the roots of the fallen tree, lowered herself down, and collapsed to the earth.
From "The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest" by Aubrey Hartman
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.
