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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



... a prune, which contains tannin; formerly used in medicine, now mainly in tanning and dyeing. It is the product of various ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various

... 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 ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge

... thus 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, as is thy ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... true or in its apparent place, and minds of different casts will differ as to the branch of the alternative which ought to be selected. If the English law is ever to assume an orderly distribution, it will be necessary to prune away the legal fictions which, in spite of some recent legislative improvements, are still ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... caution, denying the authorship of the bad jokes he took pains to circulate.[81] The proceedings of the Legislature he regarded with real alarm whenever their object was to alter what the public voice pronounced capable of amendment, or prune what was judged superfluous. The vote of the House of Commons on the 1st of March, for discontinuing the services of one of the Lords of the Admiralty, and that given on the 2nd of May for getting rid of one of the Postmasters-General, his Lordship called "stripping ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... and 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 papyrus of the royal scribe Nekht we see the god enthroned in front ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... summer blooming, dry off gradually in the fall and keep during the winter—until February or March—in a frost-proof room or cellar. After they have been brought into the light, repot and water and new growth will start. Prune back the old branches severely, as the next crop of flowers will be borne on the new wood. This is also a good time to start cuttings for a new supply ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell

... You just oughter see us at dinner,' he says with a bitter laugh. 'There'll be a mess of lovely boiled carrots,' he says, 'and some kind of chopped fodder, and if we're all real good and don't spill things on our bibs or make spots on the tablecloth, why, for dessert we'll each have a nice dried prune. I shudder to think,' he says, 'what I could do right this minute to a large double sirloin cooked with onions Desdemona style, which is ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... 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 into lengths of from two to four eyes each, making them of a uniform length of say ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann

... memory of Alice Windham as 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

... plants, like the leaves, need light and air for their best 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 ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... her name This Buffalo, this recreant town, Sharps and lawyers prune and tame: Few pioneers in Buffalo; Except young lovers flushed and fleet And winds hallooing down ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay

... We mean the amount of the top itself. Usually it is the spread and the height together. When you prune, you tend to hold back the total amount of the fruiting area of the tree. If you allow it to develop untouched you ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

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

... 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. It's the humanity of one part ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... 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, refused to retrench the trivialities. ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... striking right into the center of one eyeball. She was taken at once to a physician who ordered her to be taken without delay to a specialist to have the eyeball removed. The parents then called me over the telephone to come at once. When I arrived and saw the eye, it looked to me like a dried up prune stone. I anointed the child, but could find no words to utter in prayer. I could only groan, but the Lord witnessed to the healing. (I think this took place on Saturday at 11 o'clock a.m. and the next day, Sunday, she was brought to the services perfectly ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag

... 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 ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... caring where they were so long as they were together, in motion, and it was May. They were passing residences where city and country met. The dwellings of people city bound, country determined. Homes where men gave so many hours to earning money, then sped away to train vines, prune trees, dig in warm earth and make things grow. Such men now crossed green lawns and talked fertilizers, new annuals, tree surgery, and carried gifts of fragrant, blooming things to their friends. Here the verandas ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... not gold alone that in California has dazzled men with visions of sudden wealth. Orange groves, peach orchards, prune orchards, wheat raising, lumbering, horse-farms; chicken-ranches, bee-ranches, sheep-breeding, seal-poaching, cod-fishing, salmon-canning—each of these has held out the same glittering possibility. Even the humblest ventures have caught the ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan

... 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 in casual, ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... 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 ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... need of help to harvest my prune crop," said the grower, "and I went to a saloon in a near-by city. On entering the place I accosted the barkeeper, and asked him if any of the men lounging about the place cared for ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... parallel was 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

... pressure to the square inch. Do you twig? All the old hard-and-fast traditions and drags on life are in the melting-pot. Death's boiling their bones, and they'll make excellent stock for the new soup. When you prune and dock things, the sap flows quicker. Regrets and repinings and repressions are going out of fashion; we shall have no time or use for them in the future. You're going to make life—well, that's something to be thankful for, anyway. You've kept Cyril Morland alive. And—well, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... The 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 ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... 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

... dey wa'n't no hams on de plantation 'cep'n' w'at 'uz in de smoke-house, but I never see Henry 'bout de smoke-house. But ez I wuz a-sayin', he tuk de ham ober ter Aun' Peggy's; en Aun' Peggy tole 'im dat w'en Mars Dugal' begin ter prune de grapevimes, he mus' go en take 'n scrape off de sap whar it ooze out'n de cut een's er de vimes, en 'n'int his ball head wid it; en ef he do dat once't a year de goopher would n' wuk agin 'im long ez he done it. En bein' ez he fotch her de ham, ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt

... to the public during the flowering season. Even a flower is not without honor, save in its own country. We have only to prepare a border of leaf-mould, take up the young plant without injuring the roots or allowing them to dry, hurry them into the ground, and prune back the bush a little, to establish it in our gardens, where it will bloom ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... Mr. Cornelius Littlepage betrays not a little of provincial admiration, as the reader will see. I have not thought it necessary to prune these passages, their causes being too familiar to leave any danger of their insertion's being misunderstood. Admiration of Broadway, certainly not more than a third-class street, as streets go in the old world, is so very common among us ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... on the twenty-second, and it was in the flutter of their practical adjustments to meet this date that Peter found the ten days of his engagement move so swiftly; to engage servants, to interview tradespeople, to prune the neglected garden—it was Savilla's notion that they should do this themselves—all the stir of domestic life made so many points of advantage to support him above that dryness of despair from which he had moments of feeling himself all too hardly rescued. He had come up out of it sufficiently ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... 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

... butcher shop that morning, 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 family had ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... 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 dull ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... to attend the portcullis over the gate, let fly a cannon-ball at him, and hit him with that shot most furiously on the right temple of his head, yet did him no more hurt than if he had but cast a prune or kernel of a wine-grape at him. What is this? said Gargantua; do you throw at us grape-kernels here? The vintage shall cost you dear; thinking indeed that the bullet had been the kernel of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... 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 ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... their legs, almost 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

... is 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 ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... and excitement to the young student, who is to step forth before the public eye, a 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 ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... 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, but lads be that pestiferous! You've but one, and ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... 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

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

... among these scenes Battery D idled the Thanksgiving day. At 5 p. m. a special feed was put on in the battery mess hall in general celebration. The feasting was getting along nicely; everybody was enjoying the menu of roast pig and prune pie and nuts and candy, when it was suddenly discovered that a number of the candles used to light the mess hall had suddenly disappeared. The aftermath was felt for several days. A thorough search for the lost candles was instituted. They could not ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman

... "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, I have thought it worth while to give drawings of the most distinct ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

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

... These both grow on their own stocks, so require no grafting, and can readily be propagated by severing the suckers which spring up around them from the roots of the tree. The Damascene, as its name implies, is a species of Damson, but coarser than the real Damson or the Prune Damson. They are not so popular on the London market as in the markets of the north, especially in Manchester, where they command prices little inferior to the better sorts, as they yield a brilliant ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... roam from flower to flower, over as varied a garden as the imagination can well conceive. There have been brave workers before us in the field, and we shall build upon good foundations. We hope to be catholic in our selections; we shall prune away only the superfluous; we shall condense anecdotes only where we think we can make them pithier and racier. We will neglect no fact that is interesting, and blend together all that old Time can give us bearing upon London. Street by street ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... a friend a little out of town who had a garden, and his wife wanted flowers, and they knew nothing about it: so I made a compact. I provided the roses—I made the soil—I planted them—and I used to go and prune them and look ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... shadow of justice in it; 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 stone of his opponent, and they will ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... 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

... 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

... 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

... went over to the shelter made for the grub and came back with a can filled with the succulent prune. Jack took them with a merry ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton

... homes, and 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

... play, content, 210 For the fair banks of Severn or of Trent, There might'st thou find some elegant retreat, Some hireling senator's deserted seat; And stretch thy prospects o'er the smiling land, For less than rent the dungeons of the Strand; There prune thy walks, support thy drooping flowers, Direct thy rivulets, and twine thy bowers; And, while thy grounds a cheap repast afford, Despise the dainties of a venal lord: There every bush with Nature's music rings, 220 There every breeze bears health upon its wings; On all thy hours Security ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... became necessary. This saved his life, but he could no longer partake of the amusements of the chase, although still able to indulge in the more delicate pursuits of the naturalist. With his wooden leg he was able to hobble about the house and lawn, prune the trees, and attend to his pets that had grown to be quite numerous, while Hugot at all times followed him about like his shadow. The boys, however, went abroad on hunting expeditions, and collected specimens as ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... to like 'em—an' I liked her—an' she liked 'em," Ben Weatherstaff admitted reluctantly. "Once or twice a year I'd go an' work at 'em a bit—prune 'em an' dig about th' roots. They run wild, but they was in rich soil, so some of ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... to prune young trees like this for the first time until they have taken firm root. Trees recently planted have not sufficient strength to bear the operation. You know that the roots can grow only by means of the leaves, so that if you take the ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... 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 to be bound by golden ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... Debby, though it was smothered like the babes in the Tower; and, turning, she beheld the trespasser scarlet with confusion, and sobered with a tardy sense of his transgression. Debby was not a starched young lady of the "prune and prism" school, but a frank, free-hearted little body, quick to read the sincerity of others, and to take looks and words at their real value. Dickens was her idol; and for his sake she could have forgiven a greater offence than this. The stranger's contrite countenance and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... the twelfth century amounted to five hundred and sixty-five. The War of the Roses had begun the extermination of dukes, which the axe of Mary Tudor completed. This was, indeed, the decapitation of the nobility. To prune away the dukes was to cut off its head. Good policy, perhaps; but it is better to corrupt than to decapitate. James I. was of this opinion. He restored dukedoms. He made a duke of his favourite Villiers, who had made him a pig;[22] a transformation from the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... manifested by her intelligent and engaging child. As she grew older, she became more and more the companion of Helen, who studied her character attentively: and, if we be allowed such a figure of speech, wisely endeavored to train it in a right direction, rather than to prune it to any conventional form. Thus a perfect confidence was established, and ever subsisted between the mother and daughter; and the natural thoughtfulness of spirit, and energy of purpose, that belonged to Edith, were unchecked, and ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... minced-pie Here standing swaggering on the table; The lofty walls so large and high I'll level down if I be able; For they be furnished with good plums, And spiced well with pepper and salt, Every prune as big as both my thumbs To drive down bravely ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... Benicia, very pale and very 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. Over her coarse smock ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... opportunities of practically testing his own work. Haydn had a very good band always at his disposal, the members of which were devoted to him. If he wrote part of a symphony over-night he could try it in the morning, prune, revise, accept, reject. Many a young composer of to-day would rejoice at such an opportunity, as indeed Haydn himself rejoiced at it. "I not only had the encouragement of constant approval," he says, speaking of this period of his career, "but as conductor ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... enjoys the future, accepts the 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. Between them and living men there is the difference which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... our further passage is peremptorily stayed. The key, engraven with the name of Jesus, will only obey the hand in which His nature is throbbing. We must be in Him, if He is to plead in us. His words must prune, direct, and control our aspirations; His service must engage our energies. We must take part in the camp with His soldiers, in the vineyard with His husbandmen, in the temple-building with His artificers. It is as we serve our King, that ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... "I'm a poor prune at the best," Pink said stubbornly, "but I am not going to let you go into that place alone. You can ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... shelter of our houses; summer and winter they are seen flying under 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 as certainly, and they would fly forth ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... him to a certain house, Lisbeth," I said, as her eyes met mine; "an old house that stands not far from the village of Down, in Kent, to prune the roses and things. I should like it to be looking its best when we ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol

... had always been a 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 ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... terminates by the Valley of Sweet Waters, the sides of which are adorned with pleasure-grounds, and an imperial kiosk, near which, with extremely bad taste, art and expense have been exerted to the utmost to constrain and prune nature, so as to destroy the luxuriance and wildness of the rivulet and its banks, by giving them the appearance of a straight canal, passing through an avenue of formal trees, and occasionally over flights of marble steps, intended to represent cataracts. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various

... says our grammar teacher, who spends the noonday hour with us and overlooks the morals of our charges. About one o'clock today she marched Mamie to my office charged with the offense of refusing, ABSOLUTELY refusing, to open her mouth and put in a prune. The child was plumped down on a stool to ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... that enough is as good as a feast. Know still further that though the habit of wastefulness may have its dangers, it is not nearly so dangerous as the habit of self-righteousness, or as the habit of nearness, both of which contract the soul until it's more like a prune than a plum. Be a plum, my child, and let who ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... truly, I should think, that the play was begun with a design to draw more amiable characters, answerable to the title of The Tender Husband; but that the author, being carried away by the luxuriancy of a genius, which he had not the heart to prune, on a general survey of the whole, distrusting the propriety of that title, added the under one: with an OR, The Accomplished Fools, in justice to his piece, and compliment to his audience. Had he called it The Accomplished ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... importance. First is quality. The commercial grower cannot afford to grow the very finest fruit. Many of the best varieties are not large enough yielders to be available for his use, and he cannot, on a large scale, so prune and care for his trees that the individual fruits receive the greatest possible amount of sunshine and thinning out—the personal care that is required for the very best quality. Second, there is the beauty ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell

... investigate its merits; what would likely cause him to take it up, and so on; he should think and write fully along these general lines, incorporate these reasons into an advertisement; then boil it down by cutting out the unnecessary words and sentences; prune, remodel, and rewrite until he has a brief advertisement, clear, concise, ...
— Practical Pointers for Patentees • Franklin Cresee

... spring of the year, but if the thick wood be cut out from time to time, new leaves will continue to push below the parts so cut off during the whole season; and, accordingly, the Chinese are particularly attentive to prune afresh in the autumn, in order to obtain a supply of young leaves in the after spring. The thermometer at this place, on the 9th of November at sun-rise, stood at 64, and at noon in the ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... for anyone—even 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 ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... merry parties, these dances at the Malkasten, in the quaintly decorated saal of the artists' club-house. There is a certain license in the dress. Velvet coats, and coats, too, in many colors, green and prune and claret, vying with black, are not tabooed. There are various uniforms of hussars, infantry, and uhlans, and some of the women, too, are dressed in a certain fantastically picturesque style to please their ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... 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 ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... Smitten with swords, with lances, and with darts. 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 ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus

... 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 would ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... 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

... 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 Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... be an absolutely intolerable neighbour, nor a decided villain: but yet, say what you will of rules, they destroy the genuine feeling of nature, as well as its true expression. Do not tell me "that this is too hard, that they only restrain and prune superfluous branches, etc." My good friend, I will illustrate this by an analogy. These things resemble love. A warmhearted youth becomes strongly attached to a maiden: he spends every hour of the day in her company, wears out his health, and lavishes ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... solemn 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

... 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

... 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 ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams

... one sunny afternoon, with my back to a clump of azaleas, watching an old coloured gardener—so old that he had started life as an "owned" negro, they said, and certainly still retained the familiar suavity of the old-time darky—I was watching him prune the shrubs when I heard the voice of Rupert K. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... what it once was, than for what it now is, I continued my way to Antwerp along an excellent paved road, lined by avenues of trees, which are often so cut (the Dutch differing from the Minorquins, who never prune a tree, saying, that nature knows best how it should grow) as not to be at all ornamental, and in some places cannot be said to afford either "from storms a shelter, or from heat a shade." In that ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard

... 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

... full o' 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 ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

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

... much easier to digest than the yolk, 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 ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... of ornamental plants and flowers, models of fruit in wax 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 ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley

... going to paint a moonlight 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

... 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 ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various

... along to you. We can look after ourselves out of the office, but what we want is someone to help in case they try to rush us there. In brief, a fighting editor. At all costs we must have privacy. No writer can prune and polish his sentences to his satisfaction if he is compelled constantly to break off in order to eject boisterous toughs. We therefore offer you the job of sitting in the outer room and intercepting these bravoes before they can reach us. The salary we leave to you. ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... 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 and pickle class." ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... fundamental principles in mind we may safely outline a method of pruning an apple tree. As the desired end is different so will the method of pruning a young tree differ from that of an old one. There are five important things for which to prune a young ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt

... pruned, or when pruned just lately. A friend once consulted me casually about a picture on which he was at work, and complained that a row of trees in it was without sufficient interest. I was fortunate enough to be able to help him by saying: "Prune them freely and put a magpie's nest in one of them," and the trees became interesting at once. People in trees always look well, or rather, I should say, trees always look well with people in them, or indeed with ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... power to rule: He gives us power To rule ourselves, and prune the exuberant flower Of youth, and ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... 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; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... 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 ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... have never yet appeared. 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 upon sowing his lucerne, of which he had six crops last year, to his infinite ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield



Words linked to "Prune" :   pruner, pollard, prune cake, cut, thin out, pinch, rationalize, poll, lop, dried fruit, disbud, do away with, shear



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