tree

¹

[tree]

noun

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.

verb (used with object)

treed, treeing 

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.

Tree

²

[tree]

noun

1. Sir Herbert Beerbohm Herbert Beerbohm, 1853–1917, English actor and theater manager; brother of Max Beerbohm.

Tree

¹

/ 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

tree

²

/ 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

verb

1. to drive or force up a tree

2. to shape or stretch (a shoe) on a shoetree

tree

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.

Other Word Forms

• treelike adjective
• treeless adjective
• treelessness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of tree¹

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”

Word History and Origins

Origin of tree¹

Old English trēo ; related to Old Frisian, Old Norse trē , Old Saxon trio , Gothic triu , Greek doru wood, drus tree

Idioms and Phrases

Idioms

1. up a tree, in a difficult or embarrassing situation; at a loss; stumped.

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.

Example Sentences

They look for hardy alder trees, which indicate an area that had been dug up for mining years ago.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

The soldiers call it a forest, though it's just a line of scraggy trees separating them from Russian positions.

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Army Corps of Engineers used just over three acres of the park as a processing site for trees and shrubs from the fire zone.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Kratom is derived from the leaves of a tree native to Southeast Asia, and is commonly made into a powder or pill.

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“I was always throwing something, trying to knock something out of a tree.”

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Related Words

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