Dictionary › P › prune
prune
1 syllableYour browser doesn’t have built-in voices. Try Chrome, Edge or Safari.
As a noun, prune means the dried, wrinkled fruit of certain species of plum. As a verb, it means become wrinkled like a dried plum, as the fingers and toes do when kept submerged in water.
Meanings of prune
11 meaningsnoun
The dried, wrinkled fruit of certain species of plum.
figurativeSomething wrinkly like a prune.
slangAn old woman, especially a wrinkly one.
Older and rare meanings (1)
obsoleteA plum.
verb
informalTo become wrinkled like a dried plum, as the fingers and toes do when kept submerged in water.
horticultureTo 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.”
figurativelyTo cut down or shorten (by the removal of unnecessary material).
“to prune a budget, or an essay”
computer scienceTo remove unnecessary branches from a tree data structure.
Weed out unwanted or unnecessary things
“We had to lose weight, so we cut the sugar from our diet”
Similar: cut, rationalize, rationalise
Older and rare meanings (1)
obsoleteTo preen; to prepare; to dress.
Meanings from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet (CC BY 4.0).