Library / English Dictionary

PRUNE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Dried plum

Classified under:

Nouns denoting foods and drinks

Hypernyms ("prune" is a kind of...):

dried fruit (fruit preserved by drying)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Weed out unwanted or unnecessary things

Example:

We had to lose weight, so we cut the sugar from our diet

Synonyms:

cut; prune; rationalise; rationalize

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "prune" is one way to...):

do away with; eliminate; extinguish; get rid of (terminate, end, or take out)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Sense 2

Meaning:

Cultivate, tend, and cut back the growth of

Example:

dress the plants in the garden

Synonyms:

clip; crop; cut back; dress; lop; prune; snip; trim

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Hypernyms (to "prune" is one way to...):

thin out (make sparse)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "prune"):

shear (cut with shears)

poll; pollard (convert into a pollard)

pinch; top (cut the top off)

disbud (thin out buds to improve the quality of the remaining flowers)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Sentence example:

They prune the trees

Derivation:

pruner (a long-handled pruning saw with a curved blade at the end and sometimes a clipper; used to prune small trees)

pruner (a worker who thins out and trims trees and shrubs)

pruning (the act of trimming a plant)

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