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DUTCH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

snoeien.

to prune (trim a tree or shrub)

7 characters1 syllables approx.Nederlands language

Meaning & usage

verb/ˈsnui̯ə(n)/
  1. to prune (trim a tree or shrub)

    ambitransitive
    Snoeien doet groeien.
  2. to prune (cut down or shorten)

    ambitransitive · figuratively
    een begroting of een essay snoeien
Where this word comes from

Inherited from Middle Dutch snoeyen. Further etymology is unknown, although several theories exist: * One theory suggests a common source with Old High German nōen (“to carve, to shave off”), but a lack of other cognates makes this unlikely; * In older texts, and dialectally, the word is synonymous with snoepen (“to snack, to eat something tasty”), which originally referred to picking fruits or other crops; * A link has been suggested to a group of words starting with sn-, which all refer to a "pointed protruding head or beak", such as snavel (“beak”) and snuit (“snout”); * Perhaps a merging of snijden (“to cut”) and groeien (“to grow”).

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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.