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prune.

A plum.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/pɹuːn/Received-Pronunciation/pɹun/Canada, General-American/pɹʉːn/Australia, New-Zealand/pɹɪu̯n/
  1. A plum.

    obsolete
  2. The dried, wrinkled fruit of certain species of plum.

  3. Something wrinkly like a prune.

    figuratively
  4. An old woman, especially a wrinkly one.

    slang
Where this word comes from

From Middle English prune, from Old French prune, from Vulgar Latin *prūna, feminine singular formed from the neutral plural of Latin prūnum, from Ancient Greek προῦνον (proûnon), variant of προῦμνον (proûmnon, “plum”), a loanword from a language of Asia Minor. Doublet of plum.

verb/pɹuːn/Received-Pronunciation/pɹun/Canada, General-American/pɹʉːn/Australia, New-Zealand/pɹɪu̯n/
  1. To become wrinkled like a dried plum, as the fingers and toes do when kept submerged in water.

    informal · intransitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English prune, from Old French prune, from Vulgar Latin *prūna, feminine singular formed from the neutral plural of Latin prūnum, from Ancient Greek προῦνον (proûnon), variant of προῦμνον (proûmnon, “plum”), a loanword from a language of Asia Minor. Doublet of plum.

verb/pɹuːn/Received-Pronunciation/pɹun/Canada, General-American/pɹʉːn/Australia, New-Zealand/pɹɪu̯n/
  1. To remove excess material from a tree or shrub; to trim, especially to make more healthy or productive.

    transitive
    A good grape grower will prune the vines once a year.
  2. To cut down or shorten (by the removal of unnecessary material).

    figuratively · transitive
    to prune a budget, or an essay
  3. To remove (something unnecessary) for the sake of cutting down or shortening that which it was previously part of.

    transitive
  4. To remove participation status from or contributed material attributed to users usually deemed inactive or undesirable from an interactive computer service or website for the sake of housekeeping.

    Internet · transitive
  5. To remove unnecessary branches from a tree data structure.

    transitive
  6. To trim the feathers with the beak.

    obsolete
  7. To preen; to prepare; to dress.

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

From Middle English prunen, prounen, proinen, from Old French proignier (“to trim the feathers with the beak”), earlier prooignier. Likely influenced by Middle French rogner, Old French rooignier (“cut, trim”) (from Latin rotundo?), and possibly by Old French provainier (“provine”) (Latin propaginem? whence French provigner). The relation to the noun is thus unclear.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.