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spruce
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
spruce
I.noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
red
▪ A lot of what exists in these woods can not be seen from my red spruce.
▪ My lookout tree is a red spruce.
▪ The red spruce and Fraser fir began to recolonize the cut-over areas.
▪ Whatever way they sliced the statistics, the mortality of the red spruce was dramatic and frightening.
▪ Hub Vogelmann can tell you two stories about the future of red spruce.
▪ The small russet cones of red spruce are borne only near the tip of the crown.
▪ The red spruces and balsam firs that dominated the vegetation near the mountaintop thrived under high rainfall and cool temperatures.
▪ I can do experiments in the greenhouse that show that red spruce are harmed by ozone and acid deposition.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A further factor complicating the story is the trend towards monoculture of timber trees such as spruce.
▪ A lot of what exists in these woods can not be seen from my red spruce.
▪ Even that blend is offset by the nearly black green of the higher, distant spruces.
▪ The red spruce and Fraser fir began to recolonize the cut-over areas.
▪ There were shapes of spruces rising to constrict a sky full of great cold stars.
▪ They'd passed beyond the deciduous woods, and the trees on either side were conifers - larch, spruce and pine.
II.verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
up
▪ Leaning over the parapet to watch the young bloods in the river sprucing up their horses for the fair.
▪ Towns along the route are sprucing up their downtowns.
▪ There will also be a £1billion drive to spruce up deprived inner-city areas.
▪ Interiors are sprucing up in green, as well.
▪ The borough council has earmarked more than £80,000 to spruce up properties on Newport Road, opposite the bus station.
▪ Clean, well-maintained, the downtown spruced up with trees and brick sidewalks and crosswalks.
▪ It also makes specialty parts and accessories, which can be used to spruce up the performance and appearance of existing automobiles.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Clean, well-maintained, the downtown spruced up with trees and brick sidewalks and crosswalks.
▪ He needed his wife's presence to spruce him up and to take both him and the cottage in hand.
▪ Interiors are sprucing up in green, as well.
▪ It also makes specialty parts and accessories, which can be used to spruce up the performance and appearance of existing automobiles.
▪ Leaning over the parapet to watch the young bloods in the river sprucing up their horses for the fair.
▪ She'd come creeping back again, complaining about Dad's crumpled collars and his scuffed shoes, sprucing him up.
▪ Towns along the route are sprucing up their downtowns.
III.adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
tree
▪ It was surrounded by spruce trees and bougainvillaea, with a high bank leading up to the front door.
▪ These and other shrubs were interspersed with small, scraggly larch and black spruce trees.
▪ Gradually I descended the spruce tree and slowly crept toward the feeding birds.
▪ All of it flowed to a field of satellite dishes surrounded by spruce trees a few hundred yards from the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.
▪ When the great spruce tree burns, its cones explode, and the seeds of a new forest are planted.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Groves of old-growth lodge-pole pine and aging spruce fir exploded into flame like toothpicks be-fore a blowtorch.
▪ He skirted the spruce plantation and supposed that at some point he should tell Sara about it.
▪ It was surrounded by spruce trees and bougainvillaea, with a high bank leading up to the front door.
▪ The spruce branch fell to the floor and the ivy wound itself around her neck like some pagan wreath.
▪ The fuselage was of welded steel tube, faired to an oval section, with spruce formers, and fabric covered.
▪ The remote Sylvan Lake Lodge overlooks a striking man-made lake and spruce forest.
▪ These and other shrubs were interspersed with small, scraggly larch and black spruce trees.
▪ When the evening comes the female spruce budworm moth rises up on warm air currents.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Spruce

Spruce \Spruce\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Spruced (spr[udd]st); p. pr. & vb. n. Sprucing (spr[udd]"s[i^]ng).] To dress with affected neatness; to trim; to make spruce; -- often used with up; as, to spruce up the house for Company.

Spruce

Spruce \Spruce\, v. i. To dress one's self with affected neatness; as, to spruce up.

Spruce

Spruce \Spruce\ (spr[udd]s), a. [Compar. Sprucer (spr[udd]"s[~e]r); superl. Sprucest (spr[udd]"s[e^]st).] [Perhaps fr. spruce a sort of leather from Prussia, which was an article of finery. See Spruce, n.]

  1. Neat, without elegance or dignity; smart; trim; -- formerly applied to things with a serious meaning; now chiefly applied to persons. ``Neat and spruce array.''
    --Remedy of Love.

  2. Sprightly; dashing. [Obs.] ``Now, my spruce companions.''
    --Shak.

    He is so spruce that he can never be genteel.
    --Tatler.

    Syn: Finical; neat; trim. See Finical. [1913 Webster] -- Spruce"ly, adv. -- Spruce"ness, n.

Spruce

Spruce \Spruce\ (spr[udd]s), n. [OE. Spruce or Pruse, Prussia, Prussian. So named because it was first known as a native of Prussia, or because its sprouts were used for making, spruce beer. Cf. Spruce beer, below, Spruce, a.]

  1. (Bot.) Any coniferous tree of the genus Picea, as the Norway spruce ( P. excelsa), and the white and black spruces of America ( P. alba and P. nigra), besides several others in the far Northwest. See Picea.

  2. The wood or timber of the spruce tree.

  3. Prussia leather; pruce. [Obs.]

    Spruce, a sort of leather corruptly so called for Prussia leather.
    --E. Phillips.

    Douglas spruce (Bot.), a valuable timber tree ( Pseudotsuga Douglasii) of Northwestern America.

    Essence of spruce, a thick, dark-colored, bitterish, and acidulous liquid made by evaporating a decoction of the young branches of spruce.

    Hemlock spruce (Bot.), a graceful coniferous tree ( Tsuga Canadensis) of North America. Its timber is valuable, and the bark is largely used in tanning leather.

    Spruce beer. [G. sprossenbier; sprosse sprout, shoot (akin to E. sprout, n.) + bier beer. The word was changed into spruce beer because the beer came from Prussia (OE. Spruce), or because it was made from the sprouts of the spruce. See Sprout, n., Beer, and cf. Spruce, n.] A kind of beer which is tinctured or flavored with spruce, either by means of the extract or by decoction.

    Spruce grouse. (Zo["o]l.) Same as Spruce partridge, below.

    Spruce leather. See Spruce, n., 3.

    Spruce partridge (Zo["o]l.), a handsome American grouse ( Dendragapus Canadensis) found in Canada and the Northern United States; -- called also Canada grouse.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
spruce

"to make trim or neat," 1590s, from spruce (adj.). Related: Spruced; sprucing.

spruce

"neat, smart in dress and appearance, dapper, brisk," 1580s, from spruce leather (mid-15c.; see spruce (n.)), a type of leather imported from Prussia in the 1400s and 1500s which was used in England to make a popular style of jerkin that was considered smart-looking.

spruce

1660s, "evergreen tree, fir," from spruse (adj.) "made of spruce wood" (early 15c.), literally "from Prussia," from Spruce, Sprws (late 14c.), unexplained alterations of Pruce "Prussia," from an Old French form of Prussia.\n

\nSpruce seems to have been a generic term for commodities brought to England by Hanseatic merchants (especially beer, boards and wooden chests, and leather), and the tree thus was believed to be particular to Prussia, which for a time was figurative in England as a land of luxuries. Compare spruce (adj.).\n

\nAs a distinct species of evergreen tree from 1731. Nearly all pines have long, soft needles growing in groups of two (Scotch) to five (white); spruce and fir needles grow singly. Spruce needles are squarish and sharp; fir needles are short and flat. Cones of the fir stand upright; cones of a spruce hang before falling.

Wiktionary
spruce

  1. (context comparable English) smart, trim, and elegant in appearance; fastidious (said of a person). n. 1 Any of various large coniferous evergreen trees from the genus ''Picea'', found in northern temperate and boreal regions; originally and more fully spruce fir. 2 (context uncountable English) The wood of a spruce. 3 (context used attributively English) Made of the wood of the spruce. 4 (context obsolete English) Prussia leather or Prussian leather; pruce. v

  2. 1 {{context|usually with (l en up)|lang=en}} To arrange neatly; tidy up. 2 {{context|usually with (l en up)|lang=en}}) To make oneself spruce (neat and elegant in appearance). 3 To tease.

Related phrases:
WordNet
spruce

adj. marked by smartness in dress and manners; "a dapper young man"; "a jaunty red hat" [syn: dapper, dashing, jaunty, natty, raffish, rakish, smart, spiffy, snappy]

spruce

  1. v. make neat, smart, or trim; "Spruce up your house for Spring"; "titivate the child" [syn: spruce up, titivate, tittivate, smarten up, slick up, spiff up]

  2. dress and groom with particular care, as for a special occasion; "He spruced up for the party" [syn: spruce up, slick up, smarten up]

spruce

  1. n. light soft moderately strong wood of spruce trees; used especially for timbers and millwork

  2. any coniferous tree of the genus Picea

Related phrases:
Gazetteer
Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Spruce (disambiguation)

Spruce are trees in the genus Picea.

Spruce may also refer to:

Spruce

A spruce is a tree of the genus Picea , a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the Family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal ( taiga) regions of the earth. Spruces are large trees, from about 20–60 metres (about 60–200 feet) tall when mature, and can be distinguished by their whorled branches and conical form. The needles, or leaves, of spruce trees are attached singly to the branches in a spiral fashion, each needle on a small peg-like structure. The needles are shed when 4–10 years old, leaving the branches rough with the retained pegs (an easy means of distinguishing them from other similar genera, where the branches are fairly smooth).

Spruces are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera (moth and butterfly) species; see list of Lepidoptera that feed on spruces. They are also used by the larvae of gall adelgids (Adelges species).

In the mountains of western Sweden scientists have found a Norway spruce tree, nicknamed Old Tjikko, which by reproducing through layering has reached an age of 9,550 years and is claimed to be the world's oldest known living tree.

Related phrases:

Usage examples of "spruce".

And there were trees-not just the stunted stands of Alpine willow and Glang-ma, whose long branches the nomads used to weave their intricate basketry, or the twisted bush that provided the Yeti-wood for their fires-but around Lhasa were forests of spruce and fir, pine and spreading yew, black and white birches, oaks and poplar.

Under the spruce by the hedgerow, the curie in the three-cornered hat reading his breviary had lost his right foot, and the very plaster, scaling off with the frost, had left white scabs on his face.

It is a land drowning in its own juices, with muskeg, quicksand and matted spruce forests making any kind of orderly traverse impossible.

At the front of the store was an array of polyvinyl chloride spruce trees predecorated with bubble lights and topped with glass penguins.

She pushed out her lower jaw and stared up through the canopy of birch, aspen, and popple, the deeper green of pine and spruce.

The stang was taller than he, a fifteen-year growth of black spruce, three foot round and oozing pitch, and looking at it Crope knew what he must do.

All over Erith, in hovels and bothies, in cottages and crofts, in marketplaces, smithies, and workshops, in barracks, taverns, malt-houses, and inns, in manor houses, stately homes, and Towers, in halls and keeps, castles and palaces, they set holly garlands on rooftrees, ivy festoons around inglenooks, sprays of mistletoe above the doors and strobiled wreaths of pine and fir and spruce on every available projection.

They closed in upon a knoll and found him standing twenty feet about them on a great cube of whinstone, completely masked by a surrounding clump of black spruce.

The red ember of Phoenix, otherwise known as Manticore-A II, rested on the horizon, just above the tips of the Old Earth spruces fringing the lawn, and the gleaming gems of at least a dozen orbital platforms moved visibly against the stars.

Of pines, the white spruce is the most common here: the red and black spruce, the balsam of Gilead fir, and Banksian pine, also occur frequently.

Just before coming to this place, they had crossed a long, narrow benchland covered with stunted fir, pine, and spruce.

Then, at the very end of the straight lane, where the alternating brownish red beeches and blackish green spruce appeared very small, and the light green mossy path gleamed up and narrowing met the sky, I saw the galloping beast approaching.

There he took them behind a thickly limbed spruce blowdown, some hundred feet from the trail, tied their reins to branches, and pumped a plasma charge into each beautiful head.

Her skin was the color of lumber, say pine or spruce, washed with a tincture of creosote and slightly aged out of doors: browner than white and lighter than, say, beans of coffee in their burlap sacks.

In the branches of a dwarf spruce a solitary capercaillie sat, unperturbed, eyeing them as they passed.