prune
Plural: prunes
Noun
- dried plum
- A plum.
- The dried, wrinkled fruit of certain species of plum.
- Something wrinkly like a prune.
- An old woman, especially a wrinkly one.
Verb
Verb Forms: pruned, pruning, prunes
- To trim by cutting away dead or overgrown branches from a plant.
- cultivate, tend, and cut back the growth of
- weed out unwanted or unnecessary things
- To become wrinkled like a dried plum, as the fingers and toes do when kept submerged in water.
- To remove excess material from a tree or shrub; to trim, especially to make more healthy or productive.
- To cut down or shorten (by the removal of unnecessary material).
- To remove (something unnecessary) for the sake of cutting down or shortening that which it was previously part of.
- To remove unnecessary branches from a tree data structure.
- to trim the feathers with the beak
- To preen; to prepare; to dress.
Examples
- A good grape grower will prune the vines once a year.
- He had to prune his lengthy word list to find a shorter, more strategic play.
- to prune a budget, or an essay
Origin / Etymology
From Middle English prune, from Old French prune, from Vulgar Latin *prūna, feminine singular formed from the neutral plural of Latin prūnum, from Ancient Greek προῦνον (proûnon), variant of προῦμνον (proûmnon, “plum”), a loanword from a language of Asia Minor. Doublet of plum.
Synonyms
clip, crop, cut, cut back, dress, lop, rationalise, rationalize, snip, trim, old woman
Scrabble Score: 7
prune: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordprune: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
prune: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary