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Prune   Listen
noun
Prune  n.  A plum; esp., a dried plum, used in cookery; as, French or Turkish prunes; California prunes.
German prune (Bot.), a large dark purple plum, of oval shape, often one-sided. It is much used for preserving, either dried or in sirup.
Prune tree. (Bot.)
(a)
A tree of the genus Prunus (Prunus domestica), which produces prunes.
(b)
The West Indian tree, Prunus occidentalis.
South African prune (Bot.), the edible fruit of a sapindaceous tree (Pappea Capensis).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Prune" Quotes from Famous Books



... some front bedroom—in a thousand little signs of aspiration, I find America asserting itself among these poor people, and as I cherish these things I find happiness asserting itself in my life. So it's my job, my consecrated job in this earth—to water the geranium, to prune the rose, to mulch the roots of self-respect among these people, and I am happy, father, happier every day that I walk ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... It will, upon the whole, be a very curious and valuable history; though, between you and me, I could have wished that he had been more correct and elegant in his style. You will find it dedicated to one of your acquaintance, who was forced to prune the luxuriant praises bestowed upon him, and yet has left enough of all conscience to satisfy a reasonable man. Harte has been very much out of order these last three or four months, but is not the less intent ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... little ceremony, their marriage, a ceremony practically illegal in their land. Rarely are weddings more solemn or bridal trips more sad, for to England they were starting that same day, never to see their dear France again, never to prune or to gather in the little vineyard, never again to look into the faces of their ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... 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 would ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell

... 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 ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... way those two towns fall for this: 'Manager Soandso is to be congratulated upon securing for his next week's attraction Mr. Suchandsuch's elaborate production of the great London success, 'The Rancid Prune,' with the following all-star cast of metropolitan favorites.' And some of ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey

... of the almond tree, clothed with pink blossoms, the scarlet flowering pomegranate, the dark, rich green of the orange-tree, already spangled over with small white blossoms, yet still laden with its golden fruit, and the prune trees of Elvas, favorites through the world, leafless as yet, but conspicuous by the clouds of white flowerets which covered them. The roofs of the suburban quintas showed themselves here and there above the orchards, and by the ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... why with remorseless knife Home to the stem prune back each bough and bud? I thought the task of education was To strengthen, not to crush; to train and feed Each subject toward fulfilment of its nature, According to the mind of God, revealed In laws, congenital with every kind And character ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... willingly drink myself, while the heavens are watering our fields. Come, wife, cook three measures of beans, adding to them a little wheat, and give us some figs. Syra! call Manes off the fields, 'tis impossible to prune the vine or to align the ridges, for the ground is too wet to-day. Let someone bring me the thrush and those two chaffinches; there were also some curds and four pieces of hare, unless the cat stole them last evening, for I know not what the infernal noise was that I heard ...
— Peace • Aristophanes

... He made no farther demur, and even allowed his house to become the seat of learning in which Sabbatai and nine chosen companions studied the Zohar and the Cabalah from dawn to darkness. Often they would desert the divan for the wooden garden-balcony overlooking the oranges and the prune-trees. And the richer Mordecai grew, the greater grew his veneration for his son, to whose merits, and not to his own diligence and honesty, he ascribed ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... and Aunt Hester, in possession of the 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 ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... them into sacks, and delivers them at 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various

... two days after this that something happened to Alice. You see she had been sent to the store for a yeast cake and some prunes, for her mamma was going to make prune bread—that is, bread with prunes in it, and it's very nice, I assure you, for I've ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis

... asked the price and came away sorrowful. Even Danny understood that a turkey was not to be thought of. They compromised on a pot-roast because it makes so much gravy, and with this and the prospect of potatoes and turnips and prune-pie, the ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... of oriental chestnuts is the retention of their leaves all winter. They also grow in a rather sprangling way. This is a protective mechanism, and when we prune them to an upright form, or graft, this wood having lost its juvenile characteristics, we are inviting trouble unless we protect the trunk in some other way. I prefer to use a paper wrap as described under Pecans, as it is quickly done and is inexpensive. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... 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

... 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

... the Union riven, and the picture will deplore, He will show it re-united and made stronger than before. Slow and patient, fair and truthful must the coming teacher be To show how the knife was sharpened that was ground to prune the tree. He will hold the Scales of Justice, he will measure praise and blame, And the South will stand the verdict, and will ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope

... 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 the ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele

... "Prune thou thy words, the thoughts control That o'er thee swell and throng; They will condense within thy soul And turn to purpose strong. But he who lets his feelings run In soft luxurious flow, Faints when hard service must be done, And shrinks at ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody

... 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 ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... God is a common Light and Splendour which illumine heaven and earth, and men according to their merits and their needs. But though God is common, and though the sun shines on all trees, some trees remain without fruit, and others bear wild fruit useless to mankind. This is why we prune these trees and graft fertile branches upon them, that they may bear good fruit, sweet to taste and useful for men. The fertile branch which comes from the living paradise of the eternal kingdom, is the light of divine grace. No work can ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge

... now, if you 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 that are ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... once in awhile ye see a prune that won't swell. Ye put 'em all in water alike, an' most on 'em gits fat an' smooth, but this one stays small an' shriveled up. There's no accountin' ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... 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

... erected by Marvin in 1906, is directly abreast of the ship's location at Cape Sheridan in 1905-06 and about one mile inland. It is on a high point of land, about four hundred feet above the water. The record is in a prune can, at the bottom of the pile of stones, and was written by Marvin himself in lead-pencil. The cairn is surmounted by a cross, made of the oak plank from our sledge runners. It faces north, and at the intersection of the upright ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... welcome day, With night we banish sorrow; Sweet air blow soft, mount larks aloft To give my Love good-morrow! Wings from the wind to please her mind, Notes from the lark I'll borrow; Bird, prune thy wing, nightingale sing, To give my Love good-morrow; To give my Love good-morrow Notes from them both ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... 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 ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... Aldobrandini. Profit by that unique minute in life to soar away to the empyrean with the swans and the eagles, even if you do have to fall back on the morrow into the bourgeoisie of the frogs. Don't economize on the nuptials, do not prune them of their splendors; don't scrimp on the day when you beam. The wedding is not the housekeeping. Oh! if I were to carry out my fancy, it would be gallant, violins would be heard under the trees. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... enough to have some sense. He would have that young hound at Sinkhole arrested as an accomplice of the horse thieves. He would put a bullet through that fool of a horse, Jake, and he would lynch Tex if he ever got his hands on him. He would sell out, by glory, and buy himself a prune orchard. ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... swains, Ye best artificers of soothing strains! Tune your soft reeds, and teach your rocks my woes, So shall my shade in sweeter rest repose. O that your birth and business had been mine; To feed the flock, and prune the spreading ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... have 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

... 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 any to-day, and possibly not to-morrow ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... 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

... was known as "the man who painted peasants without wrinkles in their breeches." Not because wrinkles were too much for him, nor because they were not thought worth while, but because, in his effort to prune his picture of the unessentials, the ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... while safe and sober Dulness observes one tedious and insipid round of tiresome uniformity, and steers equally clear of eccentricity and of beauty. Dulness has few redundancies to retrench, few luxuriancies to prune, and few irregularities to smooth. These, though errors, are the errors of Genius, for there is rarely redundancy without plenitude, or irregularity without greatness. The excesses of Genius may easily be retrenched, but the deficiencies of Dulness ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More

... together. Whichever of them happened to be the stronger held the city and drove out the other party, so that the fighting never ceased either inside or outside the gates. The peaceful country round about had been laid waste and desolate. The peasants did not dare go out to till their fields or prune their olive-trees. Mothers were afraid to let their little ones out of their sight, for hungry wolves and other wild beasts prowled about the ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman

... 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 devil. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... its warmth and recumbent posture he found favourable to composition. At other times he would compose or prune his verses, as he walked in the garden, and then, coming in, dictate. His verse was not at the command of his will. Sometimes he would lie awake the whole night, trying but unable to make a single line. At other times lines flowed ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... Grandpa's brain, as if he could almost recall when he, a young soldier of the North, had taken his fill of sweet, black-seeded, carnation-tinted pulp at some plantation in the harried South. And now he ate greedily till the last prune was gone, when Johnnie had Buckle throw all of the green rinds into the sink. (It was this attention to detail which invested his games with reality.) Then, the repast finished, Grandpa fretted to be away, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... pedestrian journey, that I was obliged to remain in my chamber one entire day. There is a very good table d'hote at my bin for twelve Groschen. Wine is paid for extra, and at the rate of from 12 to 18 Groschen the bottle. The sort usually drunk here is the Medoc. The prices of articles of prune necessity are dearer in Berlin than either at Dresden or Vienna; particularly the article of washing, which is dearer than in any country ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... cassia buds ground, one pound of bitter almond meal, (the cassia and almond meal to be mixed together before they are put to the spirits) two ounces of sliced orris root, and about thirty or forty prune stones pounded. Shake the whole well together, two or three times a day, for three days or more. Let them settle, then pour in one gallon of the best wine vinegar; and add to every four gallons, one ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... 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 ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller

... Negrepelisse, and for him this meant a family connection with the Marquise d'Espard, and a political career in Paris. Here was a fair tree to cultivate in spite of the ill-omened, unsightly mistletoe that grew thick upon it; he would hang his fortunes upon it, and prune it, and wait till he could gather ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... while she led me, blinking, into the light. A tall stranger, a lady in prune-coloured silk, sat ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie

... never days of ease; I till my ground and prune my trees. When ripened gold is all the plain, I put my sickle to the grain. I labor hard, and toil and sweat, While others dream within the dell; But even while my brow is wet, I sing my ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... is a perverted one which usually goes with a love for the shell of the book rather than its meat. It is better far to prune out the obscure works and buy, a few at a time if necessary, the best known works of favorite authors, than to clutter up one's bookshelves with volumes which will never be opened. Partial sets acquired in this way can be of uniform edition and gain in value from those ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... when I get home. I bade him yester-even fetch me two pound o' prunes from the spicer's, and gave him threepence in his hand to pay for 'em; and if the rascal went not and lost the money at cross and pile with Gregory White, and never a prune have I in the store-cupboard. He's at all evers playing me tricks o' that fashion. 'Tisn't a week since I sent him for a dozen o' Paris candles, and he left 'em in the water as he came o'er the bridge. Eh, Mistress Wilson, ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... 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, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... 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 isn't inhuman. ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... nurtured, dost thou ask The classic poet's well-conn'd task? Nay, Erskine, nay,—on the wild hill Let the wild heath-bell flourish still; Cherish the tulip, prune the vine, But freely let the woodbine twine, And leave untrimm'd the eglantine: Nay, my friend, nay,—since oft thy praise Hath given fresh vigour to my lays; Since oft thy judgment could refine My flatten'd thought or cumbrous line, Still kind, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... bark from the tree on account of our being wild and uncivilized," said Pee-wee. "I can make ink out of prune juice and we can write with a stick like hunters do when they ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... opera: travellers had to give up their provisions at the frontier and 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 ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... is now to be studied, not in metaphysical ethics, but in popular novels. The aim of the modern historian is to compile a Times newspaper of events which happened three or four, eight or ten centuries ago. The aim of the modern philosopher is to tabulate mountains of research, and to prune away with agnostic non possumus the ancient oracles of hypothesis ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... draughts were diffuse and crude, and that he wrote his productions several times before he had condensed and polished them to his mind. There is nothing choicer in the English language than some of his narratives, descriptions, and sketches of character, but in his best books he did not always prune sufficiently, and in his last work, Wild Wales, he seemed to me to have lost the faculty altogether. Mr. Murray long refused to publish it unless it was curtailed, and Borrow, with his usual self-will and self-confidence, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... because, if it be true, as they say, that the challenged may choose the weapons, the other has no right to choose such as will prevent and keep him from winning. My decision, therefore, is that the fat challenger prune, peel, thin, trim and correct himself, and take eleven stone of his flesh off his body, here or there, as he pleases, and as suits him best; and being in this way reduced to nine stone weight, he will make himself equal and even with nine ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... 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 to retrench or ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... and plaster, baskets and bunches of flowers, conservatories, all flowering plants from every country and the way to grow them. All sorts of seeds, grass, fruit trees of all kinds, and the best way to prune and plant them. ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley

... dress of prune-coloured silk, with coral beads and coral coloured stockings. But her dress was both shabby and soiled, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... very fluent," Mary answered, looking down at the queer little dots and spirals on her paper. "I daresay we'll have to prune it before it's printed. But it is a good fluency, a rich fluency. To me it is irresistible—like a spring freshet, like the sap rushing madly through ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... But tchah! it's no use to say nought to your uncle. If somebody was 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 and train, and ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... harbour. The consul occupied a place somewhat near the tail of his political party's procession. The music of the band wagon sounded very faintly to him in the distance. The plums of office went to others. Bridger's share of the spoils—the consulship at Ratona—was little more than a prune—a dried prune from the boarding-house department of the public crib. But $900 yearly was opulence in Ratona. Besides, Bridger had contracted a passion for shooting alligators in the lagoons near his ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... I don't think that's good, to trim them too high. I think the lower the tree the better it handles all along. Take the fruit growers, they aim to have the trees as low as possible to make picking and spraying easy. If you prune a tree, especially the Persian walnut, too much, it will have a bad effect ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... sacred and profane, spirituous and spiritual, from the protoplasm of the cliff-dwellers to the details of the Dingley bill, not skipping accurate information on the process of whiskey-making in Kentucky, a crocodile-hunt in Florida, suffrage in Wyoming, a lynching-bee in Texas, polygamy in Utah, prune-drying in California, divorces in Dakota, gold-mining in Colorado, cotton-spinning in Georgia, tobacco-raising in Alabama, marble-quarrying in Tennessee, the number of Quakers in Philadelphia, one's sensations while being scalped by Sioux, how marriages are arranged, what a man says when he ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell

... 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

... the futurist son, aged five, of a futurist artist. Silently I handed over the instrument. The monitor looked at it, and then at me without comment. But there is an international language of facial expression, and his said, unmistakably, "You poor, simple prune! You choice ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... learned reasoning and soliloquies of Sackville and Norton. Quite undeniably of classical influence, however, is the refinement and restraint noticeable throughout the play. These we welcome. They prune the tree of native drama without hacking off its stoutest limbs. Under their control tragedy steps upon the stage in an English dress to prove herself worthy of her Roman sister and ultimately ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... hack, 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, amputate, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... favourite of Mrs. Ogilvie since that Whit-sunday nearly two months ago when she saw him looking at her garden and invited him in, and every time he revisited the Vicarage he had devoted some of his time to helping her weed or prune or do whatever she wanted to do in her garden. He was also on friendly terms with Miriam, the elder of Mr. Ogilvie's two sisters, who was very like her brother in appearance and who gave to the house the decorous loving care he gave to the church. And however enthralling her domestic ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... the plantation of Mr. R.—he proved himself a real peasant, knew every plant by name, and was constantly stopping to pick a dead leaf or prune a shoot—we continued our journey and arrived at Tangoa. Tangoa is a small island, on which the Presbyterian mission has established a central school for the more intelligent of the natives of the whole group, where they may be trained as ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... that hang over the roadside in Ontario. Now the longing for the fruit is natural, and innocent in itself; the trouble is that if it were indulged in and gratified by every person who passed along the road, the farmer would abandon the cultivation of his orchard. He would neither plant nor prune his trees, except for the expectation of enjoying what they yield. The offense, accordingly, concerns everybody who ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... winter days which, cold 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

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

... superbly, stood bareheaded in a draught till the brougham drove away (in these matters he had no equal), and, having warned Sara of his intended visit by a special messenger, he had the pleasure of finding the young lady alone. Following her custom, she was appropriately dressed for the occasion in prune-coloured velvet, which suggested dignity, and very beautiful antique Spanish lace, which symbolized the long endurance of things apparently too delicate, subtle, and trifling for the assaults of time. The Prince kissed both of her white hands, and lamented ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... Adam first of Men— Sole partner and sole part of all these joys, Dearer thy self than all;— But let us ever praise him, and extol His bounty, following our delightful Task, To prune these growing plants, and tend these flowrs; Which were it toilsome, yet ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... longer now the winged inhabitants That in the woods their sweet lives sing away, Flee from the form of man, but gather round, And prune their feathers on the hands Which little children stretch in friendly sport Towards these dreadless partners of ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock

... own, "he cannot commit simony, though he would never so fain." But how strongly and agreeably to reason these things be spoken, we are not as yet able to perceive, except perchance these men have plucked off the wings from the truth; as the Romans in old time did prune and pinion their goddess Victoria, after they had once gotten her home, to the end that with the same wings she should never more be able to flee away from them again. But what if Jeremy tell them, as is afore rehearsed, that these be lies? What if the same prophet say in another place ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel

... has had experience, or is willing to give time for the mastery of this subject, I should advise that he employ an experienced gardener to prune his vines after the second year. It is a brief task, but a great deal depends upon it. In selecting a man for the work I should require something more than exaggerated and personal assurances. In every village there are terrible butchers of vines and fruit-trees, who have some crude system of their ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... our English skies; they mate and nest and bicker round our cathedrals and our cottages; they are noisy and turbulent and unrestrained before us, as if we were no more than the hedges we plant and prune; they are irrepressible as street-arabs, and arrogant as monarchs. If all human life were by some unimagined catastrophe swept from the length and breadth of England, the cawing of the rooks would sound ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... 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 ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum

... Pecuchet; and the next moment: "The authors recommend us to suppress every direct passage. In this way the sap is counteracted, and the tree necessarily suffers thereby. In order to be in good health, it would be necessary for it to have no fruit! However, those which we prune and which we never manure produce them not so big, it is true, but more luscious. I require them to give me a reason for this! And not only each kind demands its particular attentions, but still more each individual tree, according to climate, temperature, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... mandate; He doth no evil, day nor night. Hear Matthew in the mass narrate, In the Gospel of the God of might, His parable portrays the state Of the Kingdom of Heaven, clear as light: 'My servants,' saith He, 'I requite As a lord who will his vineyard prune; The season of the year is right, And labourers must be ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett

... wrote twenty books of husbandry. Lysander, when ambassadors came to see him, bragged of nothing more than of his orchard, hi sunt ordines mei. What shall I say of Cincinnatus, Cato, Tully, and many such? how they have been pleased with it, to prune, plant, inoculate and graft, to show so many several kinds of pears, apples, plums, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... these poets was twofold: they had not only to prune and purify their dialect and produce verses, they had also to find readers, to create a public, to begin a propaganda. The first means adopted was the publication of the Armana prouvencau, already ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... The garden gates were kept locked, and no one entered but the men who went there in the daytime to prune the trees and water the flowers and keep the place in order. Not even Suo might go into the garden to mourn beside the body of ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle

... isn't already dead jumps on everyone else's neck and slays him. It's a skit, you know, on these foolish tragedies which every manager is putting on just now. Personally, I think it's the best thing since The Prune-Hater's Daughter." ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... necessary: there is surely no need that everybody should be a scholar, no call that every one should square the circle. Our manner of teaching," said he, "cramps and warps many a mind, which if left more at liberty would have been respectable in some way, though perhaps not in that. We lop our trees, and prune them, and pinch them about," he would say, "and nail them tight up to the wall, while a good standard is at last the only thing for bearing healthy fruit, though it commonly begins later. Let the people learn necessary knowledge; let them ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi

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

... 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

... pretty, her transparent skin faintly reflecting the pink of the satin coverlet. By the bed sat an old woman of the people. Her ragged white locks were bound about by a fillet of black silk; her face, dark as burnt umber, was seamed and lined like a withered prune; even her long broad nose was wrinkled; her dull eyes looked like mud-puddles; her big underlip was pursed up as if she had been speaking mincing words, and her chin was covered with a short white stubble. ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... 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

... for evenings round the polished board Old lava fires, the sun-steeped hillside's hoard. Without a Past, you lack that southern wall O'er which the vines of Poesy should crawl; Still they're your only hope: no midnight oil Makes up for virtue wanting in the soil; 90 Manure them well and prune them; 'twon't be France, Nor Spain, nor Italy, but there's your chance. You have one story-teller worth a score Of dead Boccaccios,—nay, add twenty more,— A hawthorn asking spring's most dainty breath, And him you're ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... Gospel to the slave, or whether there can be, and he yet remain a slave? We preach the Gospel to arouse men, they to subdue them; we to awaken, they to soothe; we to inspire self-reliance, they submission; we to drive them forward in growth, they to repress and prune down growth; we to convert them into men, they to make them content to ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... be true. We have seen very conclusively that when you prune even a little you are going to ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... no teaching more frequently insisted upon in the Old and in the New Testament as the truth of a judgment, now, or in the future, upon the misdeeds or sins of men. Let criticism prune and cut as it will, while it exhibits the deplorably low standard of morality once prevalent among the Hebrew peoples, and therefore prevalent among their Gods, their Elohim, Adonai and Jahveh, one thing, at least, is undeniable—that that which is recognised as immoral is reprobated and ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... for Verbomania is to keep away from these butterfly buzz bees; put the clothes-pin of caution on your lips; spend more time alone with your thoughts. Nourish your idea plants that have been starved; prune your ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... fluttering thing, Must we no longer live together? And dost thou prune thy trembling wing, To take thy flight thou know'st not whither? Thy humorous vein, thy pleasing folly Lies all neglected, all forgot; And pensive, wavering, melancholy, Thou dread'st and hop'st thou ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... sixty days being fled, Arcturus leaves the holy Ocean's bed And, shining, burns the twilight; when that shrill Child of Pandion opens first her bill— Before she twitters, prune your vines! ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... candidate for the laurels of fame;—a day of weariness and stiffness to the dignified professors, obliged to sit hour after hour, listening to the florid eloquence whose luxuriance they have in vain attempted to prune, or trying to listen while the spirit yawns and stretches itself to its drowsy length;—a day of intense interest to the young maiden, who sees among the youthful band of aspirants one who is the "bright particular star" round ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... 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 steals o'er the ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... 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

... ploughing the ground up with their noses, and staring stupidly about them. Every well-kept vineyard ought to be as free from stones as possible, and therefore the peasants, when they weed, dig a trench about the vines, or prune them, always remove at the same time whatever stones or flints they may meet with; these are piled at the end of the vineyard in a heap of about twenty feet square and six feet ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... separates it from other white roses as an unmistakable brunette. Yet she was sometimes minded to cut it down and uproot it, for the perverse thing would persist on flowering at its summit, and William Skin, sent aloft on ladders—whether in autumn or spring to prune this riot, or in summer to reap blooms by the armful— invariably did damage to ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... "Dorn—he can write as no one else on this earth. Oh, you ought to see him swing a pen! He limps a little, but what of it? Just think how many people go around on two sound legs, but have their heads all full of rubbish! But Dorn! He's whole cloth and a yard wide! He's as soft as prune juice. Why, when a dog barks at him, he gives the beast a lump of sugar. That's the kind of a man ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... 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? If you ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

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

... article of Shakspeare—"Remember what I observed to my Lord Oxford for Mr. Pope's use out of Cowley's preface." Malone appears to have discovered this observation of Cowley's, which is curious enough, and very ungrateful to that commentator's ideas: it is "to prune and lop away the old withered branches" in the new editions of Shakspeare and other ancient poets! "Pope adopted," says Malone, "this very unwarrantable idea; Oldys was the person who suggested to Pope the singular course he pursued in his edition ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... child-like. I liked her because she's the sort of girl you can take anywhere and not queer yourself if you collide with your fiancee—visiting relative from 'Frisco, you know. She's equipped to impersonate anything from the younger set to the prune ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... 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

... use. You see, therefore, how unjust it is to despise any one for the plainness of his dress, and the rusticity of his manners. You may understand a little Latin, but you know not how to plough, sow grain, or reap the harvest, nor even to prune a tree. Sit down with being convinced that you have ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin

... 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 ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... boys sat down silently at the table. Throughout the meal they looked down at their plates and did not lift their red eyes. They did not eat much, although they had been working in the cold all day, and there was a rabbit stewed in gravy for supper, and prune pies. ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather

... 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

... is from plants collected near Ithaca, in the autumn of 1898. This species is considered to be one of the excellent mushrooms for food. When fresh it has a mealy odor and taste, as do several of the species of this genus. It is known as the prune mushroom. ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... much nourishment in dates, figs (those dried round are better than layer figs) and raisins. Pitted dates and seedless raisins are best for light outfits. And do not despise the humble prune; buy the best grade in the market (unknown to landladies) and soak over night before stewing; it will be a revelation. Take a variety of dried fruits, and mix them in different combinations, sweet and tart, so as not to ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... with his character as a god of vegetation in general that they were not allowed to stop up wells of water, which are so important for the irrigation of hot southern lands. According to one legend, he taught men to train the vine to poles, to prune its superfluous foliage, and to extract the juice of the grape. In the papyrus of Nebseni, written about 1550 B.C., Osiris is depicted sitting in a shrine, from the roof of which hang clusters of grapes; and in ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

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

... Sometime Latona's daughter we behold, When the impregnate air retains the thread, That weaves her zone. In the celestial court, Whence I return, are many jewels found, So dear and beautiful, they cannot brook Transporting from that realm: and of these lights Such was the song. Who doth not prune his wing To soar up thither, let him look from thence For tidings from the dumb. When, singing thus, Those burning suns that circled round us thrice, As nearest stars around the fixed pole, Then seem'd they like to ladies, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... 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 ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb

... 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 ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... sketch, and strum a piano once, but I cannot deliberately set to work on such things again. I gave them all up when I became a writer, really, I suppose, because I did not care for them, but nominally on the grounds of "resolute limitation," as Lord Acton said—with the idea that if you prune off the otiose boughs of a tree, you throw the strength of the sap into the boughs you retain. I see now that it was a mistake. But it is too late to begin again now; I was reading Kingsley's Life the other day. He used to overwork himself periodically—use ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... of a brood, or perhaps I should say three broods, of children which wander among the barrels and boxes and hams and winseys seeking what they may devour,—a handful of sugar, a prune, or a sweetie. ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... 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

... And thorn-clad chestnut, all was sweet to her. She loved to plant the seed and watch the germ, And nurse the tender leaflet like a babe, And lead the tendril right. To her they seem'd Like living friends. She sedulously mark'd Their health and order, and was skill'd to prune The too luxuriant spray, or gadding vine. She taught the blushing Strawberry where to run, And stoop'd to kiss the timid Violet, Blossoming in the shade, and sometimes dream'd The Lily of the lakelet, calmly throned On ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... true to your own vision, as heretofore you have been, you will always be original and personal in your work. In stating your opinion on the structural character of man, bird, or beast, always wilfully caricature; it gives you something to prune, which is ever so much more satisfactory than having constantly to fill gaps which an unincisive vision has caused, and which will invariably make work ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... mentioned above should be added fifteen seconds, which is the slice of eternity needed to trim, prune and chasten our mustache, which is not a large group ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... Church. A certain amount of new material, some of it home-made, some of it drawn from foreign sources, was added; but the great bulk of the new service-book had been contained in one or other of the older manuals. The Reformers did but clip and prune, with that exquisite taste and judgment which belong by tradition to English gardeners, the overgrowth and rank luxuriance of a too long neglected, "careless-ordered" garden. But whence came the earlier formularies themselves, from which Cranmer and the rest quarried the stone ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... loudly protested his wife. "Of all the softies! You haven't backbone enough for a prune. And if my orders to my own son ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... too highly commend his example, 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 ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... hate prigs who keep their wives in leading-strings. I do not mean to marry any one, but if I should be left to such a piece of folly, it must be to one who will take me for better for worse; just as I am, and not as a wild plant for him to prune till he has got it into a shape to suit him. now, Aunty, promise me one thing. Never mention Dr. ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss



Words linked to "Prune" :   rationalise, dried fruit, eliminate, rationalize, cut back, poll, clip, lop, snip, do away with, pruner, pollard, prune whip, pinch, dress, thin out, prune cake, trim, disbud



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