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Prune   Listen
verb
Prune  v. t.  (past & past part. pruned; pres. part. pruning)  
1.
To lop or cut off the superfluous parts, branches, or shoots of; to clear of useless material; to shape or smooth by trimming; to trim: as, to prune trees; to prune an essay. "Taking into consideration how they (laws) are to be pruned and reformed." "Our delightful task To prune these growing plants, and tend these flowers."
2.
To cut off or cut out, as useless parts. "Horace will our superfluous branches prune."
3.
To preen; to prepare; to dress. "His royal bird Prunes the immortal wing and cloys his beak."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Prune" Quotes from Famous Books



... it were my fault. Why didn't you plant them earlier? I don't believe you know any of the tricks of your profession, James. You never seem to graft anything or prune anything, and I'm sure you don't know how to cut a slip. James, why don't you prune more? Prune now—I should like to watch you. Where's your pruning-hook? You can't possibly do ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne

... Wald," which is itself the history of a lunatic as full of horrors, and those of no very different kind, as the Confessions themselves. That editing, and perhaps something more than editing, on Lockhart's part would have been exactly the thing necessary to prune and train and direct the Shepherd's disorderly luxuriance into the methodical madness of the Justified Sinner—to give Hogg's loose though by no means vulgar style the dress of his own polished manner—to weed and shape and correct and straighten the faults of ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... try to squeeze their message to ten words, and count and prune and count again; but not so, Catherine. For her, a telegram had never contained any space limit. It meant less to her than a post-card to you or me. Not that the girl was consciously extravagant. No, had you asked her, she would have claimed rigid economy—she rarely, for instance, paid more ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... of 1915, as soon as bud development took place, I commenced to prune. I cut off all weak branches to a strong bud and sometimes went over the trees a second time in order to insure that the work should be well done. These trees referred to are mostly three years old and at that age the pruning should ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... never could be. I am too impulsive, too unrestrained, too shapeless in mind. If I wrote a book it might be interesting, human, heart-felt, true to life, I hope, not stupid, I believe; but it would be a chaos. You—how it would shock your critical mind! I could never select and prune and blend and graft. I should have to throw my mind and heart down on the paper and just ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... I was startled," said her husband. "Almost those very words—mark me, almost those very words—had been said to me when I was working in the wonderful gardens of Nebuchadnezzar, and he was standing by me watching me prune a rose-bush. That Maria Edgeworth and the great Nebuchadnezzar should have said the same thing to me was enough to ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton

... down and stagnate, and by the by they degenerate into that appalling subtlety which is their ruling passion gone crooked. And then comes a new revelation and a great simplifying. They want to live face to face with God without a screen of ritual and images and priestcraft. They want to prune life of its foolish fringes and get back to the noble bareness of the desert. Remember, it is always the empty desert and the empty sky that cast their spell over them—these, and the hot, strong, antiseptic sunlight which burns up all rot and decay. It ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... Englishman as Henry Wilmers. She told him that she read rapidly, 'a great deal at one gulp,' and thought in flashes—a way with the makers of phrases. She wrote, she confessed, laboriously. The desire to prune, compress, overcharge, was a torment to the nervous woman writing under a sharp necessity for payment. Her songs were shot off on the impulsion; prose was the heavy task. 'To be pointedly rational,' she said, 'is a greater difficulty for me than a fine delirium.' She did not talk as if it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... worked nearly a lifetime on one poem. It completely absorbed his life. It is said that Bryant rewrote "Thanatopsis" a hundred times, and even then was not satisfied with it. John Foster would sometimes linger a week over a single sentence. He would hack, split, prune, pull up by the roots, or practice any other severity on whatever he wrote, till it gained his consent to exist. Chalmers was once asked what Foster was about in London. "Hard at it," he replied, "at the rate of a line a week." Dickens, one of the greatest writers of modern ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... she walked beside him in the mellow Winter sunshine. An odor of fruit blossoms came to them almost unreally sweet, and farther down the street they saw many little street-stands where flowering branches of prune and ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... giving, now withholding, the morsel with which he was about to feed the bird, and so exciting its appetite and gratifying it by turns. "What! more yet?—thou foul kite, thou wouldst never have done—give thee part thou wilt have all—Ay, prune thy feathers, and prink thyself gay—much thou wilt make of it now—dost think I know thee not?—dost think I see not that all that ruffling and pluming of wing and feathers is not for thy master, but to try what thou canst make ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... news to the family at the dinner-table, and it was received with rejoicing. The little girl alone was silent. But, doubtless, she had not heard what he said, for she was intent upon a huge piece of dried-prune cobbler. ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... saltines; Swiss cheese and rye bread sandwich; 1 square butter; prune whip, soft ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... Prune and chasten, then, Lycinus. All this is not quite like you, who never used to be over-ready with your commendation; you seem to have gone now to the opposite extreme of prodigality, and developed from a niggard into a spendthrift of praise. Do not be ashamed ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... a little place like this appeals to me. Now our places in England are all so large that they take an army of servants to run them, and the gardening and all that are done by one's men. But here with only yourselves you can do so much. You can feed your own chickens, you can prune your own trees, you can do such a lot yourselves. I should think it ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell

... still He trains the branch of good Where the high blossoms be, And wieldeth still the shears of ill To prune and ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle

... ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks, and when peace should reign among the nations of the earth. Well, give me an army for a hundred years, good people, and then I may voice the will of the gods that iron be used no more to plough its way in living flesh, but only to turn the furrow and to prune the tree. Meanwhile, believe me, every man must learn to love honor and virtue, and to respect his neighbor, and the gods ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller

... the fortressed walls of Larissa; to Pharsalia they hie, 'neath Pharsalian roofs they gather. None tills the soil, the heifers' necks grow softened, the trailing vine is not cleansed by the curved rake-prongs, nor does the sickle prune the shade of the spreading tree-branches, nor does the bullock up-tear the glebe with the prone-bending ploughshare; squalid rust ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... Cleveland gives bravely, although they are not invariably rendered with the felicity and pointed phrase which come from a careful selection of words and symbols. She is a little dazzled by the flowers and fruitage of a fancy which most of us are compelled to curb and prune to meet the requisitions of time and space. These papers were prepared chiefly, the dedication tells us, for schools and colleges, and a little of the pedantry and ample leisure of a teacher who has his audience safe under his own control is apparent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks'; that force and power that they used formerly to destroy the church of God, now they shall use it to do her service, even to break up the clods of the hearts of sinners, and to prune and dress the house of God, and vineyard of Jesus Christ; 'nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more'; for the word of the kingdom of peace shall bear sway. 'And thou, O tower of the flock, the stronghold of the daughter of Zion, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... and by engaging him it is understood that either he, or some other member of the gardeners' corporation to which he belongs, will continue to take care of your garden as long as you own it. At each season he will pay your garden a visit, and put everything to rights—he will clip the hedges, prune the fruit trees, [405] repair the fences, train the climbing-plants, look after the flowers,—putting up paper awnings to protect delicate shrubs from the sun during the hot season, or making little tents of straw to shelter them in time of frost;—he will do a hundred useful and ingenious things ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... quite spring-like. Prune cherry trees and currant bushes. Transplant plum tree sprouts. Messrs. Biddle and Drew finish preparing their vessel, and ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... when I turn my thoughts from those who shared my dawn of day, My fresh and joyous morning prune, and now are passed away, I can see just how sweet all is, how good, and be resigned To sit thus in the afternoon, ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge

... fruit and cakes and preserves, was no longer a closed paradise, in front of which they prowled with greedy, covetous appetites. As they passed the shops they now extended their hands and pilfered a prune, a few cherries, or a bit of cod. They also provisioned themselves at the markets, keeping a sharp look-out as they made their way between the stalls, picking up everything that fell, and often assisting the fall by ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... Pork; (loin of,) to roast, Pork, (middling piece,) to roast, Pork pie, Pork steaks, Pork, to stew, Port wine jelly, Pot pie, Pot pie, (apple,) Potatoes, to boil, Potatoes, to fry, Potatoes, roasted Potato pudding Potato snow Pound cake Prawns, to boil Prune pudding Pudding catchup Pumpkin, to boil Pumpkin chips Pumpkin pudding Pumpkin yeast Punch Punch, (frozen,) Punch, (milk,) Punch, (fine milk,) Punch, (regent's,) Punch, (Roman,) Pyramid of tarts, ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... thought about it the more it sounded like a good sensible idear to me. I went in an told the Lootenant that unless he had something better I thought Id call him Prune juice from then on. He said Id guessed wrong unless I wanted to act as a stone crusher on a road gang. The trouble with most of these fellos is there to stuck up to play the game. Its all right to call a General Pancake ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter

... well-greased baking-dish place one-quarter of the noodles, bits of butter or other fat, add one-half of the prunes, then another layer of the noodles, butter or fat, the remaining prunes, the rest of the noodles. Pour over the prune juice and spread crumbs over top and bake in a moderate oven until crumbs ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum

... Britain's ships should traverse the globe in 1778, to confirm to the Russian empire the possession of near thirty degrees, or above six hundred miles, of continent, which Mr Engel, in his zeal for the practicability of a north-east passage, would prune away from the length of Asia to the eastward. See his Alanoires Geographiques, &c. Lausanne 1765; which, however, contains much real information, and many parts of which are confirmed by Captain Cook's ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... you to relate to me, friend Beatrice? Does the nightingale still sing well? Does the lark soar as high as of yore? Does the linnet still prune itself?" ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... time the City Mouse had something new to show: he took the little Country Mouse into a corner on the top shelf, where a big jar of dried prunes stood open. After much tugging and pulling they got a large dried prune out of the jar on to the shelf and began to nibble at it. This was even better than the brown sugar. The little Country Mouse liked the taste so much that he could hardly nibble fast enough. But all at once, in the ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant

... into buying worthless acres which they did not want, in the fear that if they delayed there would be nothing left to buy. Fake real-estate schemes—colonies, ten-acre orchard tracts, hen farms, orange groves, prune plantations—flourished over the width and length of a continent, and promoters reaped a harvest. Land with a legitimate basis of value doubled and trebled in ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... its results. You do not put guano on your garden that your garden may blossom guano. Indeed, even for the proper subordination of one's own thoughts the same self-control is needed; and there is no severer test of literary training than in the power to prune out one's most cherished sentence, when it grows obvious that the sacrifice will help the symmetry or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... difficult to lay much weight on these latter characters. With respect to the shape of the fruit, we have conclusive evidence that it is extremely variable: Downing (10/74. 'Fruits of America' pages 276, 278, 284, 310, 314. Mr. Rivers raised ('Gardener's Chronicle' 1863 page 27) from the Prune-peche, which bears large, round, red plums on stout, robust shoots, a seedling which bears oval, smaller fruit on shoots that are so slender as to be almost pendulous.) gives outlines of the plums of two seedlings, namely, the red and imperial gages, raised from the greengage; ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... wintry days after the solstice, then the star Arcturus [1325] leaves the holy stream of Ocean and first rises brilliant at dusk. After him the shrilly wailing daughter of Pandion, the swallow, appears to men when spring is just beginning. Before she comes, prune the vines, for it is ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... going to bring some young fig trees. Thus we shall have quite an orchard, if they grow, but the "if" is a big one. The people do not seem to take any trouble with their fruit trees and hardly ever prune them. Perhaps they are disheartened on account of the rats. Most of the orchards are a long way off in sheltered ravines round ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... it would be easy to get wood. It is not. The army takes a lot of it, and those who, in ordinary winters, have wood to sell, have to keep it for themselves this year. Pere has cut down all the old trees he could find—old prune trees, old apple trees, old chestnut trees—and it is not the best of firewood. I hated to see even that done, but he claimed that he wanted to clear a couple of pieces of land, and I try to believe him. Did you ever burn green wood? ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... catch the swell. "A stranger I," the Huntsman said, Advancing from the hazel shade. The maid, alarmed, with hasty oar, Pushed her light shallop from the shore, 400 And when a space was gained between, Closer she drew her bosom's screen— So forth the startled swan would swing, So turn to prune his ruffled wing. Then safe, though fluttered and amazed, 405 She paused, and on the stranger gazed. Not his the form, nor his the eye, That ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... resentment of the sale of the old home gave Martie food for thoughts of another nature. Lydia never let the subject rest for an instant. She came to the table red-eyed and sniffing. It was no use to plant sweet-peas this year, it was no use to prune the roses. Whether Lydia was sitting rocking on the side porch silently, through the spring twilight, or impatiently flinging a setting hen off the nest, with muttered observations concerning the senseless scattering of the Monroe family before that setting of eggs could be hatched, Martie felt ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... lover was of the type adored by our great-grandmothers, handsome, melancholy, passionate, respectful but desperate, a user of most choice English; with large black eyes, smooth white forehead, and jetty curls, now sunk, Mr. Perry says, to the covers of prune boxes. The heroine, too, was sensitive and melancholy. When alone upon the seashore or in the mountains, at sunset or twilight, or under the midnight moon, or when the wind is blowing, she overflows into stanza or sonnet, "To Autumn," "To Sunset," "To the Bat," "To the Nightingale," ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... feed the hungry, clothe the naked, nurse the sick, comfort the dying, and instruct the ignorant. Like the Fathers of the Society of Jesuits, those skilled, patient, wise tillers in the soil of the human mind, their daily task is to hoe and tend, and prune and train, and water the young green things growing in what to them is the Garden of God, and to other good and even holy people, the vineyard of the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... Prune thou thy words; the thoughts control That o'er thee swell and throng; They will condense within thy soul, And change to ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... with all the tenderness characteristic of one who loves what he reads. Now and again he glanced at his unfinished copy of the beautiful portrait of Andrea del Sarto, and once his eyes rested on another copy next to his, better and truer than his, and once he stopped to pick up a girl's prune-coloured tie, which had fallen from the neighbouring easel. After this he seemed to become unconscious of his surroundings, as unconscious, indeed, as any one of the pictures near him. Any one might have been justified in mistaking him for the portrait of a ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various

... slowly. Be modest. Speak distinctly. Address all your hearers. Be uniformly courteous. Prune your sentences. Cultivate mental alertness. Conceal your method. Be scrupulously clear. Feel sure of yourself. Look your audience in the eyes. Be direct. Favor your deep tones. Speak deliberately. Get to your facts. Be earnest. Observe your pauses. Suit the action to the word. Be yourself at your ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser

... is an East Indian fruit with a stone, of the prune genus. Crude or preserved myrobolans were a more important article of commerce in the Middle Ages than now. There were five varieties, one of which, the Mirobalani citrini, were so named because they were lemon-colored. ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... excision, recision; curtailment &c 201; minuend, subtrahend; decrease &c 36; abrasion. V. subduct, subtract; deduct, deduce; bate, retrench; remove, withdraw, take from, take away; detract. garble, mutilate, amputate, detruncate^; cut off, cut away, cut out; abscind^, excise; pare, thin, prune, decimate; abrade, scrape, file; geld, castrate; eliminate. diminish &c 36; curtail &c (shorten) 201; deprive of &c (take) 789; weaken. Adj. subtracted &c v.; subtractive. Adv. in deduction &c n.; less; short of; minus, without, except, except for, excepting, with the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... entered a large nursery and garden establishment in Germany, as an apprentice boy, to learn the garden business, to become a gardener and horticulturist, to learn how to raise trees and other plants, to learn how to graft, to prune and cultivate, and, in general, to take care of all kinds of growing plants. One of the first duties bestowed upon me in my new place was the charge of a large plot of young hazel or filbert plants. To prune or graft them? Not at all. At that time I did not know anything about such skilled ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... tell your Aunt Lora to make a noise like an ice-cream in the sun and melt away. She's a prune, and what she says don't go. Do you want to know what a germ or a microbe—it's the same thing—really is? It's a fellow that has the best time you can think of. They've been fooling you, kid. They saw you were easy, so they handed it to you on a plate. I'm the guy that can ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... And say, she's no prune-fed pacifist, Cousin Myra. Course, she don't swing the hammer quite so open when the folks get back, for Vee ain't one you can walk on with hobnails and get away with it. I guess Myra suspicioned that. But, when it comes to sly jabs and spicy little side remarks shot ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... latest arguments is the best. Gigadibs has said: "If you must hold a dogmatic faith, at all events reform it. Prune ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... tulip beds, begin to force roses. Place pots over seakale and surround them with manure, litter, dried leaves, &c. Plant dried roots of border flowers in mild weather. Take strawberries in pots into the greenhouse. Take cuttings of chrysanthemums and strike them under glass. Prune and plant gooseberry, currant, fruit, and deciduous trees and shrubs. Cucumbers and melons to be sown in the hot-bed. Apply manures ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... little ways like this an' entertained me fine; but it was mighty hard to wring any useful work out of him. He used to prune the rose vines, and now and again he'd do a little dustin'; but once when I had to bake sourdough bread, I pointed out that the garden needed weedin', an' explained to him just what effect weedin' had on garden truck. He sez to me, "My motto is, 'Competition results in the survival of the fittest.' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... things grew waur instead o' better in the Hall. The general he got mair nairvous, and his leddy mair melancholy every day, and yet there wasna any quarrel or bickering between them, for when they've been togither in the breakfast room I used often tae gang round and prune the rose-tree alongside o' the window, so that I couldna help hearin' a great pairt o' their conversation, though sair against ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... development, and it sometimes happens that the branches of the fruit trees grow so thick that the fruits do not get sufficient light and air. This makes it necessary to thin the branches or in other words to prune the tree. Some trees also start more fruit than they can properly feed and as a result the ripened fruits are small and the tree is weakened. This makes it necessary to thin the fruits while they are young ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... therefore the whites only should be used in cases of very weak digestion. Beaten up with orange juice, they are both palatable and wholesome; or they may be beaten very stiff and served cold with a sauce of prune juice or other cooked fruit juices. This makes a delicious and very ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... antauxa parto. Prowess valoreco, kuragxegeco. Prowl vagi. Proximate proksima, apuda. Proximity proksimeco, apudeco. Proxy anstatauxulo. Prudence singardemo. Prudent singardema, prudenta. Prune cxirkauxhaki. Prune seka pruno. Pruning shears brancxotondilo. Prussian, a Pruso. Prussic acid ciana acido. Pry sercxi, rigardeti. Psalm psalmo. Psalmody psalmokantado. Psalter psalmaro. Pseudonym pseuxdonomo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... to return to Eden and its inhabitants. They have little to do but "to lop and prune and prop and bind," to adore their Maker, and to avoid the prohibited tree. It would perhaps have been impossible for a poet with more dramatic genius than Milton to make these favourites of Heaven interesting in their happy ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... got the habit of running out to meet him or bringing their thorns and splinters for him to pull out with his jackknife. He was a man who never stopped in the front yard to see how the clover was coming up, who never hoed around his currant bushes or ever found time to prune his fruit trees. He was in short a mean, selfish man who was yet decent enough to know himself for what he was but not decent enough to admit it and mend his ways. It may be that he did not know ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... down the leafy lane Looked city-ward, then stooped to prune again Her vines and simples, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... several methods, which are followed with more or less success. I will first describe that which I have found most successful, namely, short cuttings, of two or three eyes each, which are made of any sound, well ripened wood, of last season's growth. Prune the vines in the fall or early winter, and make the cuttings as soon as convenient; for if the wood is not kept perfectly fresh and green, the cuttings will fail to grow. Now, cut up all the sound, well-ripened wood ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann

... through their medium, but the skilful developement of which, subjects a female writer, and more particularly a youthful one, to ungenerous animadversion. It is to be hoped, that the friends of this gifted girl will so prune the luxuriance of her pen, as to leave nothing to detract from a work so ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... little higher, we found that the true source from which the fountain is supplied was above, and that an Arab was washing a flock of sheep in it! We continued our walk along the side of the mountain to the other end of the city, through gardens of almond, apricot, prune, and walnut-trees, bound each to each by great vines, whose heavy arms they seemed barely able to support. The interior of the town is dark and filthy; but it has a long, busy bazaar extending its whole length, and a cafe, where we procured the best ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... I will prune my myrtle tree, That in winter green will be, When other flow'rs are pale and dead: Their color gone, their beauty fled, No, I'll not wander with the bee; ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... mixed with water; and Ismenodora seems already marked out for sway and command; for otherwise she would not have rejected such illustrious and wealthy suitors to woo a lad hardly yet arrived at man's estate, and almost requiring a tutor still. And therefore men of sense prune the excessive wealth of their wives, as if it had wings that required clipping; for this same wealth implants in them luxury, caprice, and vanity, by which they are often elated and fly away altogether: but if they remain, it would be better ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... the parasite weeds that fed on its very roots have been plucked up with a salutary violence. To us there remain only quiet duties, the constant care, the gradual improvement, the cautious and unhazardous labours of the industrious though contented gardener—to prune, to strengthen, to engraft, and one by one to remove from its leaves and fresh shoots the slug and the caterpillar.' Coleridge goes farther than George Eliot, when he adds the exhortation—'Far be it from us to undervalue with light and senseless detraction the conscientious ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley

... the factory before the sun has risen. They are here taken in hand at once; on exceptional days as many as 160 tons being so treated in the whole province. After the following season, say end of June, the farmers prune their trees; these prunings are carted to the factory, where the leaves are separated and made ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various

... the breast-fed baby do not require as much attention as those of the bottle-fed child. In cases of constipation, after four months, from one teaspoon up to one-half cup of unsweetened prune juice may be given one hour before the ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... haggle, notch, slash, gash, split, chop, hew, lop, prune, reap, mow, clip, shear, trim, dock, crop, shave, whittle, slice, slit, score, lance, carve, bisect, dissect, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... I have loved thy wild abode, Unknown, unploughed, untrodden shore; Where scarce the woodman finds a road, And scarce the fisher plies an oar; For man's neglect I love thee more; That art nor avarice intrude,— To tame thy torrents' thunder-shock, Or prune thy vintage of the rock, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... ounces of gruel, one tablespoonful of granulated or two of milk sugar, a pinch of salt and bicarbonate of soda. The child should now have five regular meals daily, arranged about as follows: Six a. m., nine ounces of this modified milk; 8 a. m., teaspoonful of prune jelly or strained juice of an orange; 10 a. m., seven ounces of the modified milk and two tablespoonfuls of a well cooked cereal; 2 p. m., five ounces of beef juice or six ounces of mutton or chicken broth, or else a coddled egg ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... in poverty and pain, To this small farm, the last of his domain, His only comfort and his only care To prune his vines, and plant the fig and pear; His only forester and only guest His falcon, faithful to him, when the rest, Whose willing hands had found so light of yore The brazen knocker of his palace door. Had now no strength to lift the wooden latch, That entrance gave beneath a roof ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... He held up his hand for inspection. "Look at that blister. It's as big as a dime and feels like a prune. They're not done yet and they'd induce you to duplicate it if they ever got you into their clutches. So long as it's all in the family I think one blister is about sufficient. Better lay ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... a prune stone. "You give Magnus Derrick my compliments and tell him he's a fool." "What do ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... fruits from the seed, and to apply the principles of acclimation, and those rich prairies will be among the great fruit-growing regions of the world. Two things are essential to successful fruit-culture, on all the alluvial soils of the Northwest: raise from seed, and prune closely and head-in short, and thus put back and strengthen the trees for the first ten years, and no more complaints ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... though they are, may warm the heart. Looking at them our mother told us how hunger hurts, and how painful want and misery are to bear, and we never left the Christmas fair without buying a few sheep or a prune man, though all we could do with them was to give them away again. When I wrote my fairy-tale, The Nuts, I had the Christmas fair at Berlin in my mind's eye, and I seemed to see the wretched little girl who, among all the happy folk, had found ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... long hard trip then across the plains. One of the author's friends at the age of thirteen years drove a little band of cows from the State of Indiana to Sacramento. He says he would not do it again for anything. He is now a man, and owns a large prune-orchard in California, and people tell him he is getting too stout, and that he ought to exercise more, and that he ought to walk every day several miles; but he shakes his head, and says, "No, I will not walk ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... In all the fairies' eyes, dismally fray'd! His ensuing voice came like the thunder crash— Meanwhile the bolt shatters some pine or ash— "Thou feeble, wanton, foolish, fickle thing! Whom nought can frighten, sadden, or abash,— To hope my solemn countenance to wring To idiot smiles!—but I will prune thy wing!" ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... and ends which He loves. It is a Divine implantation by the Holy Ghost. Perhaps some of you are saying, "Then it is useless for me to try to cultivate it, because I have not got it,—exactly!" You may cut and prune and water forever, but you can never cultivate that which is not planted. Your first work is to get this love shed abroad in your heart. It is one of the delusions of this age that human nature only wants pruning, improving, developing, and it ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth

... End, the END! No more of paragraphs to prune or mend; No more blue pencil, with its ruthless line, To blot the phrase 'particularly fine'; No more of 'slips,' and 'galleys,' and 'revises,' Of words 'transmogrified,' and 'wild surmises'; No more of ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... to the ground floor, inhabited by old Madame Prune, my landlady, and her aged husband; they are absorbed in prayer before ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... developed, too, the naturally small, hard, dry, sour prune and transformed it into a juicy, sweet fruit that is bigger and more delicious than our ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... oldest of the four, an old space-buster with a face wrinkled like a dried prune, burned by cosmic rays and the suns of worlds so far away they were scarcely credible, had taken command. Suddenly, Old Dunbar had known where they were. Suddenly, Dunbar ...
— To Each His Star • Bryce Walton

... will yourselves watch a few birds in flight, or opening and closing their wings to prune them, you will soon know as much as is needful for our art purposes; and, which is far more desirable, feel how very little we know, to any purpose, of even the familiar creatures ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... system had probably better never have been introduced and that society might have been much happier without it. The practical statesman has a very different task to perform. He has to look at things as they are, to take them as he finds them, to supply deficiencies and to prune excesses as far as in him lies. The task of furnishing a corrective for derangements of the paper medium with us is almost inexpressibly great. The power exerted by the States to charter banking corporations, and which, having been carried to a great excess, has ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... gentleman was soon to give a far more characteristic specimen of his peculiar powers. Poets, according to the ordinary rule, should begin by exuberant fancy, and learn to prune and refine as the reasoning faculties develop. But Pope was from the first a conscious and deliberate artist. He had read the fashionable critics of his time, and had accepted their canons as an embodiment of irrefragable reason. His ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... thee for centuries to come." "It will not depart from the ways in which you train it." If, therefore, you would be a blessing to your child, and avert those terrible judgments of God which rest upon parental delinquency, begin now, while your infant is in the cradle, to sow the seeds of life. Prune well the tender olive plants, and direct its evolving life in the way God ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... the bladed gold; High to the topmost orchard branches climb The apple-gatherers, and from each limb Shake the ripe globes of sweetness, downward rolled Upon the leaf-strewn ground; and all day long From the near vineyard comes the merry song Of those who prune the stocks and tread the press. The spirit melts beneath the mastering sense Of supreme beauty and beneficence, Power divine ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... staging The Beggar's Opera was one of supreme ease. Indeed, so easy was it that it became a matter of some embarrassment to prune and select the required amount of data. Here was Hogarth and his actual scene of Newgate with Macheath in chains; here was Laroon's Cries of London falling, in its edition of 1733, pat into the period; here was the National Portrait Gallery and, added to these, here ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay

... to come and steal his legs I don't b'lieve he'd holler 'Stop thief!' but when it comes to my fruit, as I'm that proud on it grieves me to see it picked, walking over the wall night after night, I feel sometimes as it's no good to prune ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... gentlemen, to men that are hungry, pig, with prune sauce, is very good eating. But, gentlemen, you are my guests, make what alterations you please. Is there anything else you wish ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... in PROVING friends, either," said Linda. "I believe in nurturing them. I would set a friend in my garden and water his feet and turn the sunshine on him and tell him to stay there and grow. I might fertilize him, I might prune him, and I might use insecticide on him. I might spray him with rather stringent solutions, but I give you my word I would not test him. If he flourished under my care I would know it, and if he did not I would know it, and that would be all I would want to know. ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... controversy raged with unabated fury. The boiled prune, blandest and most inoffensive of breakfast dishes, formed the basis of a spirited debate. There were pro-prunists and there were con-prunists. The parsnip had its champions and its antagonists; the carrot its defenders and its assailants. In this quarter was the cabbage ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb

... furbishing progresses, the new owner begins to get really acquainted with his place and discover what exists in the line of shrubs, trees, and vines. There may even be a few flowers that have survived years of neglect. If he is wise, he will prune and preserve all these as a nucleus. Around them he can build ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... (Vav Zayin Mem Resh Tav) is thus in the construct with the word God, exactly as in Judges v.23, Is. ix. 18, Eccl. iii. 18. As for the word vezimrat (Vav Zayin Mem Resh Tav) it has the meaning which the same root has in Lev. xxv. 4 ("thou shalt not prune") and in Is. xxv. 5; that is to say, "to cut". The meaning of our verse, then, is: "The strength and the vengeance of our Lord have been our salvation." One must not be astonished that the text uses vayehi (Vav Yod He Yod) (imperfect changed ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... from the first is tinged with venous blood, or even when the sputum is very bloody, of the prune-juice variety, the heart is in serious trouble, and the right ventricle has generally become weak and possibly dilated. The heart may have been diseased and therefore is unable to overcome the pressure in the lungs ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.

... a literary carnival. If an indecorous adventure befell our friend Maistre Estienne le Gout, my lord the duke would turn it into the funniest of rondels, all the rhymes being the names of the cases of nouns or the moods of verbs; and Maistre Estienne would make reply in similar fashion, seeking to prune the story of its more humiliating episodes. If Fredet was too long away from Court, a rondel went to upbraid him; and it was in a rondel that Fredet would excuse himself. Sometimes two or three, or as many as a dozen, would set to work on the same refrain, the same idea, or in the same macaronic ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... because our reason is the outcome of that order? Our well-being consists in learning it and in adjusting our lives to it. When we cross it or seek to contravene it, we are destroyed. But Nature in her universal procedures is not rational, as I am rational when I weed my garden, prune my trees, select my seed or my stock, or arm myself with tools or weapons. In such matters I take a short cut to that which Nature reaches by a slow, roundabout, and wasteful process. How does she weed her garden? By the survival ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... chromos and boxed them in gaudy frames, many of whose atrocities were aggravated by panels of plush of a color that could hardly be described by any other name than fermented prune. Over the corner of these they had thrown "throws" or drapes of malicious magenta horribly figured ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... to the gard'ner cried, "Behold this fellow by my side; What is the use with daily toil To war with weeds, to clear the soil, And with keen intermittent labour To graft and prune for fruit with flavour The peach and plum, if such as he, Voracious vermin, may make free? Give them the roller or the rake, And crush as you ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... whether it's the Black Rim or the Lorrigan outfit that's all wrong. I know all about grandad and all the various and sundry uncles and forbears that earned us the name of being bad; it makes darn interesting stuff to tell now and then to some of the fellows who were raised in a prune orchard and will sit and listen with watering mouths and eyes goggling. I've been a hero, months on end, just for the things that my grandad did in the seventies. Of course," he pulled his lips into their whimsical smile, "I've touched up the family biography here and there and made heroes ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... by moonlight. Wilna, if Billy arrives, make him comfortable, and tell him I'll return by midnight." And without taking the trouble to notice me at all, he strode away toward the veranda, chewing vigorously upon his last prune. ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... the comedian who is compelled to take himself seriously and make the most of it, or a tart plum that concludes in a mellow prune. ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... carnal man," said the King, peevishly. "Dreams are the gifts of the saints, and are not granted to such as thou! Dost thou think that, in the prune of my manhood, I could have youth and beauty forced on my sight, and hear man's law and man's voice say, 'They are thine, and thine only,' and not feel that war was brought to my hearth, and a snare set on my bed, and that the fiend had set watch on my soul? Verily, I tell thee, man ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... little time for botanizing; but I found there many plants unknown to the lowlands. Among them were a species of prune, the water-hemlock, and the strawberry. This last was like that species which grows in our woods; but it was insipid. I brought the roots with me to Fort Marlborough, where it lingered a year or two after fruiting and gradually died.* I found there also ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... the imperial gage, "grows freely and rises rapidly, and has long dark shoots." The famous Washington plum bears a globular fruit, but its offspring, the emerald drop, is nearly as much elongated as the most elongated plum figured by Downing, namely, Manning's prune. I have made a small collection of the stones of twenty-five kinds, and they graduate in shape from the bluntest into the sharpest kinds. As characters derived from seeds are generally of high systematic importance, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... is his uncle's teaching, this is Worcester, Malevolent to you in all aspects; Which makes him prune himself, and bristle up The crest of ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... benefit of ideas, the service rendered by those who introduce moral truths into the general mind?—I am plagued, in all my living, with a perpetual tariff of prices. If I work in my garden, and prune an apple-tree, I am well enough entertained, and could continue indefinitely in the like occupation. But it comes to mind that a day is gone, and I have got this precious nothing done. I go to Boston or New York, and run up and down on my affairs: they are sped, but so is the ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... Adam leads her into the garden to prune over-luxuriant branches and to train vines from tree to tree. While they are thus occupied, the Almighty summons Raphael, and, after informing him Satan has escaped from hell and has found his way to Paradise to disturb the felicity of man, bids the archangel hasten down to ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... he found at a workshop, back of his home, was a thin, stooped figure, gray as a wolf, wrinkled as a prune, and stained about the mouth by tobacco. His eyes, beneath their overhanging brows of gray, were singularly sharp and brilliant. Garrison made up his mind that the blaze in their depths was none other than ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele

... by his successor, without ever meeting argument by argument; so that while the firing is interminable, "all their shots are fired in the air." Before this "frightful clatter" can be reported, the papers of the day are obliged to make all sorts of excisions, to prune away "nonsense," and reduce the "inflated and bombastic style." Chatter and clamor, that is the whole substance of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Vnckles teaching. This is Worcester Maleuolent to you in all Aspects: Which makes him prune himselfe, and bristle vp The crest of Youth ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... and yet his course is too austere for many of us. Has untrammelled curiosity no charms? Would I, for example, forego my casual kakemonos, my ignorantly acquired majolica, some trifling accumulation of Greek coins, that handful of Eastern rugs? Could I prune away certain excrescent minor Whistlers? those bits of ivory cutting from old Italy and Japan? those tarnished Tuscan panels?—in truth, I could and would not. Yet had I stuck to my first love, prints, I should by this time be mentioned respectfully among the initiated, my name would ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... yourself—to criticise your gestures until after they are made. You can't prune a peach tree until it comes up; therefore speak much, and observe your own speech. While you are examining yourself, do not forget to study statuary and paintings to see how the great portrayers of nature have made their subjects express ideas through action. Notice the gestures ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... Cp. Lev. xxv. 4, '... in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath unto the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.' ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... whole story, greeted him warmly. They were sure he was hungry after all that evidence. Smither should toast him some more muffins, his dear father had eaten them all. He must put his legs up on the sofa; and he must have a glass of prune brandy too. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... write you to let that fool Belgian prune the whole place like that," Pan remarked as we paused at old Tilting Rock and looked down upon the orderly and repaired Elmnest in the ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... were for putting little political men to control and regulate the Food, and the party of reaction for whom Caterharn spoke, speaking always with a more sinister ambiguity, crystallising his intention first in one threatening phrase and then another, now that men must "prune the bramble growths," now that they must find a "cure for elephantiasis," and at last upon the eve of the election that they ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... it ever does any one any good to be humbled!" maintained Jane, stoutly and with reason. "Especially if it's a poor, frail little soul that aint got no mother! I did what I thought best, though I can't afford it no way in the world! To prune and dress a lie aint going to make it grow into a truth!" She rose. "I guess I'll see if Henry Jonas'll be willing to take ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead

... better appearance. I heard him remark this morning that he almost despaired of your ever bearing fruit, or looking even presentable. I am sure we each have the same soil to draw our nourishment from, and one hand to prune away our deformities." ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams

... familiar spirit, you would shout at them,—you would stamp your feet at them. For instance I would ask them what right they have to rend and mutilate the body of the Bible. They would answer that they do not cut out true Scriptures, but prune away supposititious accretions. By authority of what judge? By the Holy Ghost. This is the answer prescribed by Calvin (Instit. lib. I, c. 7), for escaping this judgment of the Church whereby spirits of prophesy are examined. Why then do some of you tear out one ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion

... eyes to mine!' whispered Trombin sentimentally. 'There is no poetry in your soul, my friend! You were certainly born without any heart, or, if I may say so, with a heart like a German prune, all dried up and hard, and needing to be boiled for hours in syrup to soften it! On the other hand, I may compare my own to the fresh fruit on the tree in July, delicate, juicy, and almost palpitating in the sunshine ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... Spears plunged into men's flesh: dread Ares drank His fill of blood: struck down fell man on man, As Greek and Trojan fought. In level poise The battle-balance hung. As when young men In hot haste prune a vineyard with the steel, And each keeps pace with each in rivalry, Since all in strength and age be equal-matched; So did the awful scales of battle hang Level: all Trojan hearts beat high, and firm Stood they in trust on aweless ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus

... Hatred, despair, and fear and vain belief, 450 The germs of misery, death, disease and crime. No longer now the winged habitants, That in the woods their sweet lives sing away, Flee from the form of man; but gather round, And prune their sunny feathers on the hands 455 Which little children stretch in friendly sport Towards these dreadless partners of their play. All things are void of terror: man has lost His desolating privilege, and stands An equal ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... should permit no day to pass without writing out at least one thought. Cover but half a sheet of notepaper—correct, prune, condense, clarify, and then, if you wish, burn it, yet, it is a distinct gain. You are shaping a sword that will stand you ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... of large mace, with some strong mutton or beef broth, some sack or white-wine, and some slices of interlarded bacon, scum it when it boils, and put to it large mace, nutmeg, ginger, pepper, raisins, two or three whole cloves, currans, prune, sage-leaves, saffron, and divers cherries; stew it well, and serve it in a fine clean scoured dish, on slices ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May

... martyrdom of the present. They feel loneliness in their own age, while with universal survey viewing the beacon-lights of history across the peaks of generations. Their seat of life is the literary faculty, and they prune and torture themselves only to maintain in this the highest intensity and capacity. They are in some sort rebels battling against time, not the humble well-doer content simply to live and bless God. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... the Dobrava. The southern slopes of Tzer are less abrupt than those on the north and descend gradually into the Leschnitza Valley, out of which rise the lesser heights of the Iverak Mountains. Both these ranges are largely covered by prune orchards, intersected with some ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... wherein so many deeds of blood are wrought, alone with a poor imbecile like my husband. None cares to help me with aught, all being too busy with their own affairs. It falls on me to till the fields, which, scanty as they are, are more than my feeble strength can compass unaided. Alone I must prune and water the vines, bring in the firewood, and go out and in by night and day to earn a scanty living for this afflicted one and myself. You will hear, perchance, mischief laid to my charge in this village of evil speakers and lazy folk. They ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... eat the official bread of Monaco; ships entering the port were confiscated if they had brought more loaves than sufficed them for their voyage thither; no man might cut his own wood without leave of the police, or prune his trees, or till his land, or irrigate it; the birth and death of every animal must be publicly registered, with the payment of a given tax, and nobody could go out after ten at night without carrying a taxed lantern. When Nice was annexed to France in ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... barrack-like methods of the French Emperor. The Swiss reformer sought to train the mind to observe, reflect, and think; to assist the faculties in attaining their fullest and freest expression; and thus to add to the richness and variety of human thought. The French imperial system sought to prune away all mental independence, and to train the young generation in neat and serviceable espalier methods: all aspiring shoots, especially in the sphere of moral and political science, were sharply cut down. Consequently French thought, which had been the most ardently speculative in Europe, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose



Words linked to "Prune" :   cut, prune cake, disbud, lop, rationalise, snip, prune whip, eliminate, poll, pruning, get rid of, cut back, clip



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