white poplar
Americannoun
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Also called abele. an Old World poplar, Populus alba, widely cultivated in the U.S., having the underside of the leaves covered with a dense silvery-white down.
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the soft, straight-grained wood of this tree.
noun
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Also called: abele. a Eurasian salicaceous tree, Populus alba, having leaves covered with dense silvery-white hairs
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another name for tulipwood
Etymology
Origin of white poplar
An Americanism dating back to 1765–75
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Chinese white-birch plywood sandwiches sheets of white poplar wood between outer layers of birch veneer, which is peeled from logs that are typically harvested in Siberian forests.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 28, 2026
The arches over the doors were painted with black cows, white poplar trees, and owls.
From "The House of Hades" by Rick Riordan
The trunk is large, and very like that of the white poplar, and its leaf is like that of the elm.
From The Deipnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned of Athen?us by Athen?us
Other varieties of the common white poplar or abele are occasionally useful, although most of them sprout badly and may become a nuisance.
From Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) by L. H. (Liberty Hyde) Bailey
It is formed of an almost uninterrupted succession of sandhills crowned with a tolerably rich vegetation; on it grow the white poplar, the aleppo and the umbrella pines.
From In Troubadour-Land A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
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.
