prune
/pɹun/ verb C2- To remove excess material from a tree or shrub; to trim, especially to make more healthy or productive. · A good grape grower will prune the vines once a year.
- To cut down or shorten (by the removal of unnecessary material). · to prune a budget, or an essay
- To remove (something unnecessary) for the sake of cutting down or shortening that which it was previously part of.
- To remove participation status from or contributed material attributed to users usually deemed inactive or undesirable from an interactive computer service or website for the sake of housekeeping.
- To remove unnecessary branches from a tree data structure.
He/she/it prunes · Past pruned · Past participle pruned · -ing form pruning
Verb forms
- Base form
- prune
- He/she/it
- prunes
- Past
- pruned
- Past participle
- pruned
- -ing form
- pruning
From the library
“Those are indeed holidays to me; I go into the garden, I plant, I prune, I trim, I kill the insects all day long.”
Other matches
Learn prune in real texts
With a free account, hover any word in the library for its meaning, hear it read aloud, save words for review timed to your memory, and see how much of each book you already know.