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Spruce   /sprus/   Listen
Spruce

noun
1.
Light soft moderately strong wood of spruce trees; used especially for timbers and millwork.
2.
Any coniferous tree of the genus Picea.
verb
(past & past part. spruced; pres. part. sprucing)
1.
Make neat, smart, or trim.  Synonyms: slick up, smarten up, spiff up, spruce up, titivate, tittivate.  "Titivate the child"
2.
Dress and groom with particular care, as for a special occasion.  Synonyms: slick up, smarten up, spruce up.
adjective
(compar. sprucer; superl. sprucest)
1.
Marked by up-to-dateness in dress and manners.  Synonyms: dapper, dashing, jaunty, natty, raffish, rakish, snappy, spiffy.  "A jaunty red hat"



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"Spruce" Quotes from Famous Books



... juniper, Juniperus osteosperma (Torr.) Little. More sheltered areas along the North Rim and in most of the canyons support scattered small stands of Douglas fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii (Merb.) Franco. These are the "spruce trees" of Spruce Tree Canyon. An occasional ponderosa pine, Pinus ponderosa Laws., represents a vestige of more montane species of plants and animals in the Park. The dusky grouse, Dendragapus obscurus (Say), occurs along the North Rim in oak-chaparral, and ...
— Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado • Sydney Anderson

... Anne, for directly in front of them was a wigwam, so cunningly built in behind a growth of small spruce trees that unless one knew of its whereabouts it might be easily passed by. The Indian girl laughed at Anne's exclamation, and nodded at her ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis

... garnished with bay windows—observe its heavy jaws of areas, its hard, close mouth of a door; its dark, deep sunken eyes of windows peering out from the heavy brow of dark stone coping that supports the slate hat in question: what a contrast to the spruce mock gentility of its neighbour, with a stand-up collar of white steps, a varnished face, and a light, jaunty, yet stiff air, like a city apprentice in his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various

... younger orchard which is exposed to the full sweep of the west wind not a catkin survived on any of the 66 varieties in that orchard. In the other older orchard which is protected on the west and north by buildings and spruce trees, sufficient catkins survived on three varieties to provide for proper pollination. In discussing the effects of winter injury on the different varieties it will be necessary to make a distinction between the two orchards. Orchard 6 is the partially protected ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... our middle West, where they encounter education too suddenly, and it would take three generations of him to speak clean English. But with all his polysyllabic wallowing, he showed himself keen-minded, pat with authorities, a spruce young graduate among these dingy Rocky Mountain campaigners. They had fought and thirsted and frozen; the books that he knew were not written when they went to school; and so far as war is to be mastered on paper, his equipment was full and polished while ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister


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