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Prune   Listen
verb
Prune  v. t.  (past & past part. pruned; pres. part. pruning)  
1.
To lop or cut off the superfluous parts, branches, or shoots of; to clear of useless material; to shape or smooth by trimming; to trim: as, to prune trees; to prune an essay. "Taking into consideration how they (laws) are to be pruned and reformed." "Our delightful task To prune these growing plants, and tend these flowers."
2.
To cut off or cut out, as useless parts. "Horace will our superfluous branches prune."
3.
To preen; to prepare; to dress. "His royal bird Prunes the immortal wing and cloys his beak."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Prune" Quotes from Famous Books



... shore Shall fair earth yield unto thy stalwart arms; No, thou may'st dig, and prune, and plant in vain, And noxious worms and things of poisonous harms Shall not be banished at the will of Cane; Thou'lt set seed-bearing root, Thou'lt plant life-giving fruit ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins

... covered baskets are slices of bread and German sausage, bottles of milk and of beer, and plenty of fresh and delicious prunes, for the prune orchards are loaded with ripe fruit. This is their dinner, for they will not ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews

... and keep your body in subjection by some other mode of discipline." He went on, however, to say that fasting was, indeed, the greatest of all corporal austerities, since it puts the axe to the root of the tree. The others only touch the bark lightly; they only scrape or prune it. Whereas when the body waxes fat it often kicks, and from this sort of fatness sin ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... take your "Blackbird,"[66] the sweetest, I am sure, that ever sung, and prune its ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... no man say that I am an obscurantist, or that I am indifferent to the value of education and the benefits of intellectual culture, when I declare that all these may be attained, and the nature of the tree remain exactly what it was. You may prune, you may train along the wall, you may get bigger fruit, you will not get better fruit. Did you ever hear the exaggerated line that describes one of the pundits of science as 'the greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind'? ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... Walpole's romance. 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," ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... thing, Must we no longer live together? And dost thou prune thy trembling wing To take thy flight thou knowest ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... duly admired 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 teachers. The exterior of this school ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... I feed the sparrows with hemp-seed and prune a rose-tree a day. After my pruning, the roses flower magnificently. I am not ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... squeeze their message to ten words, and count and prune and count again; but not so, Catherine. For her, a telegram had never contained any space limit. It meant less to her than a post-card to you or me. Not that the girl was consciously extravagant. No, had you asked her, she would have claimed rigid economy—she rarely, for instance, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... be done with a very sharp instrument, and with care, lest you violate, and unsettle the root; which is likewise to be practis'd upon all those which you did not transplant, unless you find them very thriving trees; and then it shall suffice to prune off the branches, and spare the tops; for this does not only greatly establish your plants by diverting the sap to the roots; but likewise frees them from the injury and concussions of the winds, and makes them to produce handsome, streight shoots, infinitely preferable ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... what would induce him to 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

... delicious week Skippy sailed into the future on the magic carpet of his imagination. He dreamed through the long dull hours of recitations; he dreamed when huddled in sweater he watched the scurrying of the baseball candidates; he dreamed over the prunes at breakfast and the prune whip at night, and in his soft and delicious bed he lay awake for hours planning out the disposal ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... Waterman 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

... 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 freely after ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... 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

... breeds confusion, and makes, that either we lose all, or hold no more than the last. Why do we not then persuade husbandmen that they should not till land, help it with marl, lime, and compost? plant hop-gardens, prune trees, look to bee-hives, rear sheep, and all other cattle at once? It is easier to do many things and continue, than ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... 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 their subjects express ideas through action. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... 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

... Before I prune my spirit wings and rise To seek my loved ones in their paradise, Yea! even before I hasten on to see That lost child's face, so like a dream to me, I would be given this intermediate role, And carry comfort to each poor, dumb soul: And bridge man's gulf of cruelty ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... to let that fool Belgian prune the whole place like that," Pan remarked as we paused at old Tilting Rock and looked down upon the orderly and repaired Elmnest in the ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... news 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

... sitting In an old wagon, for he could not ride, Drawn of two fishes for the season fitting, Which through the flood before did softly slide And swim away; yet he had by his side His plow and harness fit to till the ground, And tools to prune the trees, before the pride Of hasting prime did ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz

... section of country. To the day when the spirit of internal improvement shall have levelled the roads and converted the hidden wealth of the soil into a glorious medium of happiness and prosperity. Then the mental stores of our hardy settlers will rapidly develop, and civilization will prune down the rugged points of character, as the implements of the husbandman ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... have started from these they may be grafted or budded. In from six to twelve months from the time buds have started from the branches thus cut back, under average conditions the new shoots will have grown to sufficient size to permit of their being budded or grafted. The best time to prune back trees to start new shoots for top-working is early in the month of March. In removing large branches there is always danger of splitting, because of the weight of the heavy branches. This may be entirely obviated by sawing upward from the under side of the branch as far ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume

... barks behold; Earth's inland realms their naval paths unfold. Her plains, long portless, now no more complain Of useless rills and fountains nursed in vain; Canals curve thro them many a liquid line, Prune their wild streams, their lakes and oceans join. Where Darien hills o'erlook the gulphy tide, Cleft in his view the enormous banks divide; Ascending sails their opening pass pursue, And waft the sparkling treasures of Peru. Moxoe resigns his stagnant world of fen, Allures, rewards the cheerful ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... years ago, after leaving school, I entered a large nursery and garden establishment in Germany, as an apprentice boy, to learn the garden business, to become a gardener and horticulturist, to learn how to raise trees and other plants, to learn how to graft, to prune and cultivate, and, in general, to take care of all kinds of growing plants. One of the first duties bestowed upon me in my new place was the charge of a large plot of young hazel or filbert plants. To prune or graft them? Not at all. At that time I did not ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... putting little political men to control and regulate the Food, and the party of reaction for whom Caterharn spoke, speaking always with a more sinister ambiguity, crystallising his intention first in one threatening phrase and then another, now that men must "prune the bramble growths," now that they must find a "cure for elephantiasis," and at last upon the eve of the election that they must ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

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

... afford, 160 And his own garden furnished out his board: The spring did first his opening roses blow, First ripening autumn bent his fruitful bough. When piercing colds had burst the brittle stone, And freezing rivers stiffened as they run, He then would prune the tenderest of his trees, Chide the late spring, and lingering western breeze: His bees first swarmed, and made his vessels foam With the rich squeezing of the juicy comb. Here lindens and the sappy pine increased; 170 Here, when gay flowers his ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... shall hear of it, I promise you, 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

... from the flint and steel, No lucifers were known, Snuffers with tallow candles came To prune the ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge

... a kind of comparison of opinions and reasons, not aimed at victory but at unravelling the truth. The very name testifies that they are called disputations because by their means the truth is, as it were, pruned or purged [dis apart; puto to prune, or to cleanse]. But after praise and reward came from listeners to the one who seemed to have the best ideas, and out of the praise often came wealth and resources, a base greed of distinction or money took possession of the minds of the disputants, and, just as in ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton

... no; merely compassionate." 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 low for ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... recommended, and the wise advice added, 'plant not too deep,' and in clay plant as near the surface as possible, for the roots will seek their way downward but rarely upward; and in transplanting 'you may prune the branches as well as the roots of apples and pears, but not of plums.' The best distance apart in an orchard for apples and pears was considered to be from 20 to 30 feet, the further apart the more they benefit from the sun and air, a piece of advice which many a subsequent planter ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... 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 Knaves, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... Cattle, to feed Clover crops College, agricultural Cropping, table of Cuckoo, note of Diseases of plants Drainage reports Evergreens, to transplant, by Mr. Glendinning Farming in Norfolk, high Farming, Mr. Mechi's, by Mr. Wilkins Farming, rule of thumb, by Mr. Wilkins Fruit trees, to root prune Gardeners' Benevolent Institution, by Mr. Wheeler Gardening, villa and suburban Grapes in pots Guano frauds Highland Patriotic Society Kew, Victoria Regia at Peel, Sir R., death of Pike, voracity of, by ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various

... the tone there was no suspecting the cost of these words to the speaker, and the subject was one in which Letty was at home. In turn she could compliment Miss Walbrook's appearance, duly admiring the toque of prune-colored velvet, with a little bunch of roses artfully disposed, and the coat of prune-colored Harris tweed. In further discussing the length of the new skirts and the chances of the tight corset coming back they found topics of common interest. The fact that they were the topics which ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... friends, every recently made bridegroom ought to be Prince 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. Here is my programme: sky-blue and silver. I would mingle with the festival the rural divinities, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... 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 too. It was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... any preaching of the 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 ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... whoever wields the pen: he must have something to say that is capable of interesting us. When the subject comes within the scope of natural science, the interest is nearly always assured; the difficulty, the great difficulty, is to prune it of its thorns and to present it under a prepossessing aspect. Truth, they say, rises naked from a well. Agreed; but admit that she is all the better for being decently clothed. She craves, if not the gaudy furbelows borrowed from rhetoric's wardrobe, at least a vine leaf. The geometers ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... in Ceylon suffered from a bad attack of leaf disease in July, "a large surface of young and succulent leaves were ready to receive the spores of the Hemeleia." The germination of the spores was rapid, and the young leaves were soon destroyed. The planter then, he says, should manure and prune so as to grow matured leaves during those months when the least damp and wind may be expected. And the same remarks are evidently equally valuable as regards rot, and show us the necessity of modifying our manurial and pruning practices so as to enable the tree the better to contend against it ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... from which the fountain is supplied was above, and that an Arab was washing a flock of sheep in it! We continued our walk along the side of the mountain to the other end of the city, through gardens of almond, apricot, prune, and walnut-trees, bound each to each by great vines, whose heavy arms they seemed barely able to support. The interior of the town is dark and filthy; but it has a long, busy bazaar extending its whole length, and a cafe, where we procured ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... withdrew, in poverty and pain, To this small farm, the last of his domain, His only comfort and his only care To prune his vines, and plant the fig and pear; His only forester and only guest His falcon, faithful to him, when the rest, Whose willing hands had found so light of yore The brazen knocker of his palace door. Had now no strength to lift the wooden latch, That entrance gave beneath a roof ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... 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 ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... the Arctic Sea, where it cultivates amicable relations with the hyperborean humming-bird, and Professor GRANT is at present attempting to naturalize it in Saint Domingo. The time is probably not far distant when it will prune its morning wing on the upper pole, and go to roost on the equator. It is, upon the whole, a grasping bird, and inspires the weaker tribes with terror; yet, notwithstanding its fierceness, it perches familiarly on the Arms of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various

... a poor prune if I lose my nerve now. I expressed my opinion of Siddons—and gee! how he'd like to be ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... cinnamon. In a 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 oven ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum

... 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 ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... 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

... to mine!' whispered Trombin sentimentally. 'There is no poetry in your soul, my friend! You were certainly born without any heart, or, if I may say so, with a heart like a German prune, all dried up and hard, and needing to be boiled for hours in syrup to soften it! On the other hand, I may compare my own to the fresh fruit on the tree in July, delicate, juicy, and almost palpitating in the ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... responsive to such applications, and I have seen the defoliation of prune trees in New York State corrected with ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various

... old prune, what'd you think of the toddle?" asked Helen, as she took a cigarette offered by Swann and tipped ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... 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, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... 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 or the day following. ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... 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. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... away, and welcome, day! With night we banish sorrow: Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, 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 ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... 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 ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... 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

... Malachi Malagrowther appeared. To the general sentiments contained in that work, we subscribe without the slightest hesitation. Strong language is usually to be deprecated, but there are seasons when no language can be too strong. We think meanly of the man who can sit down to round his periods, and prune his language, and reduce his feelings to the level of cold mediocrity, when he knows that the best interests of his country are at stake, and that he is her chosen champion. And such, most assuredly, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... had probably better never have been introduced and that society might have been much happier without it. The practical statesman has a very different task to perform. He has to look at things as they are, to take them as he finds them, to supply deficiencies and to prune excesses as far as in him lies. The task of furnishing a corrective for derangements of the paper medium with us is almost inexpressibly great. The power exerted by the States to charter banking corporations, and which, having ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... juice and one egg; or, broth and meat; care being taken that the meat is always rare and scraped or very finely divided; beefsteak, mutton chop, or roast beef may be given. Very stale bread, or two pieces of zwieback. Prune pulp or baked apple, one to two tablespoonfuls. Water; ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt

... "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 ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody

... spring-like. Prune cherry trees and currant bushes. Transplant plum tree sprouts. Messrs. Biddle and Drew finish preparing their vessel, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

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

... of delight And queene of beautie, now thou maist go pack; For lo! thy kingdoms is defaced quight, Thy scepter rent, and power put to wrack; 400 And thy gay sonne, that winged God of Love, May now goe prune his plumes like ruffed* dove. ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... would they, Lupe, old man? He wants good tools to tackle the wolves in winter. There, it's all over, and I don't feel so savage now. Here, you had better go and have a good wash while I see to the vine poles and put in a new un or two from the stack. I expect I shall have to prune a bit too, and tie, where those young ruffians have been at work. Let's get a bit tidy before the master comes back, though I don't suppose he'd take any notice if there wasn't a grape bunch left. But he'd see the dirt and scratches on ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn

... 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. Either he got his own way in the end, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... 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 ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... "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 ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... it is nowhere very plentiful, and does not live in flocks, there is not much cause for complaint. However, its cousin, the California jay, has an extremely bad record. It is a great fruit eater, and devastates prune, apricot, and cherry orchards. It is a serious robber of the nests of small birds and hens, and though it eats some grasshoppers and a very few weed seeds, it is thoroughly disliked by western fruit ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory

... with the 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 capable ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... likewise see good 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 ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... 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 ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... thee—to paint his thoughts in rhyme? My master, thou wouldst say, can ably teach, And often tells me more than parsons preach; But still, methinks, if he was forc'd to toil Like me each day—to cultivate the soil, To prune the trees, to keep the fences round; Reduce the rising to the level ground, Draw water from the fountains near at hand To cheer and fertilize the thirsty land, He would not trade in trifles such as these, And drive the peaceful linnets ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various

... this new spring, whereof The leaves and flowers flush into shoot, I might have succour and aid of Love, To prune these branches at the root, That long have borne such bitter fruit, And graft a new bough, comforted With happy blossoms white and red; So pleasure should for pain atone, Nor Love slay this tree, nor instead Plant ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang

... admire, though all the world did; it seemed sad sophistry. Whitbread was the Demosthenes of bad taste and vulgar vehemence, but strong, and English. Holland is impressive from sense and sincerity. Lord Lansdowne good, but still a debater only. Grenville I like vastly, if he would prune his speeches down to an hour's delivery. Burdett is sweet and silvery as Belial himself, and I think the greatest favourite in Pandemonium; at least I always heard the country gentlemen and the ministerial ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... adjust, arrange; decorate, adorn, garnish, embellish, bedeck, trick; prune, clip, lop; (Colloq.) rebuke, reprove, reprimand, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... the Mall, whom her dress declared a widow, and whom, by the jolting prance of her gait, and the broad resplendence of her countenance, he guessed to have lately buried some prosperous citizen. He followed her home, and found her to be no less than the relict of Prune the grocer, who, having no children, had bequeathed to her all his debts and dues, and his estates real and personal. No formality was necessary in addressing madam Prune, and therefore Leviculus went next morning without an introductor. His declaration ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... prune away all that reminded him of her wild growth, so that it might no longer humiliate him to think to what a companion he had sunk. How happy they would be! Of course the world would censure him if it knew, but the world ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill

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

... you make up what you lose by charging it to other people. Pa will make it hot for you the last of the week. He has been looking over your bill, and comparing it with the hired girl, and she says we haven't ever had a prune, or a dried apple, or a raisin, or any cinnamon, or crackers and cheese out of your store, and he says you are worse than the James brothers, and that you used to be a three card monte man, and he will have you arrested for highway robbery, but you can settle that with Pa. ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... 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 ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... consumed His feeble frame, and kindling in his mind Hatred, despair, and fear and vain belief, 450 The germs of misery, death, disease and crime. No longer now the winged habitants, That in the woods their sweet lives sing away, Flee from the form of man; but gather round, And prune their sunny feathers on the hands 455 Which little children stretch in friendly sport Towards these dreadless partners of their play. All things are void of terror: man has lost His desolating privilege, and stands An equal amidst equals: happiness 460 And science dawn ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

... from the first is tinged with venous blood, or even when the sputum is very bloody, of the prune-juice variety, the heart is in serious trouble, and the right ventricle has generally become weak and possibly dilated. The heart may have been diseased and therefore is unable to overcome the pressure in the lungs during ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.

... their old college companions, that those who wrote with good sense and good taste at twenty have mostly settled down into the dullest and baldest of prosers; while such as dealt in bombastic flourishes and absurd ambitiousness of style have learned, as time went on, to prune their early luxuriances, while still retaining something of raciness, interest, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... the gardener's sake, you would try and make a 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 our deformities." ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams

... 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 and plant them. ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley

... Chinaman cook carried it to the Jap chore boy, "It is a boy." The Jap chore boy carried it to the teamsters, "It is a boy." The teamsters carried it to the men on the ditches, "It is a boy." The ditch men carried it to the men in the orchard, "It is a boy." The prune trees took up the glad news and whispered it to the apricot trees, "It is a boy." The apricot trees whispered it to the peach trees, "It is a boy." The peach trees whispered it to all the other fruit trees, "It is ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge

... upon), and "Matthew Wald," which is itself the history of a 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 shape and correct and straighten the faults of the Boar of the Forest—nobody ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... creator Jack Lofty. Garrick had objected to the introduction of Jack, on the ground that he was only a distraction. But Goldsmith, whether in writing a novel or a play, was more anxious to represent human nature than to prune a plot, and paid but little respect to the unities, if only he could arouse our interest. And who is not delighted with this Jack Lofty and his "duchessy" talk—his airs of patronage, his mysterious hints, his gay familiarity with the great, his ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... 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 ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

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

... I cannot 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 initiated, my name would be found ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... all the Old and New World cities; the Englishman and the American travel everywhere; the Japanese are fringing the Pacific with their laboring classes; toiling Italians and Greeks are found all over the world; peasants from the Balkans gather the prune and orange crops of California; the moujic from the Russian Caucasus tills the wheat-fields of the Dakotas; while the Irish, Scandinavians, and Teutons form the political, farming, and commercial classes ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... nearly a lifetime on 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 practise 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 rate of a line ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... 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

... rational; but is it not because our reason is the outcome of that order? Our well-being consists in learning it and in adjusting our lives to it. When we cross it or seek to contravene it, we are destroyed. But Nature in her universal procedures is not rational, as I am rational when I weed my garden, prune my trees, select my seed or my stock, or arm myself with tools or weapons. In such matters I take a short cut to that which Nature reaches by a slow, roundabout, and wasteful process. How does she weed her ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... to dilute and prune and "correct" the one, so as to make it "fit in" with the other, in some stiff, ethical theory of my own, where would be the interest for the reader? Besides, who am I ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... remonstrated. "I 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. Elliott's ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss

... walking over to Red and informing that person that he, Red, was a worm-eaten prune and that for half a wink he, Johnny, would prove it. Red grabbed him by the seat of his corduroys and the collar of his shirt and helped him outside, where they strolled about, taking pot shots at whatever their ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... seem even to prune it of the greater part of its branches, and concentrate the threads of sap which remain in a few twigs;" and he thought of a Carmelite convent to which he had gone from time to time, remembered their failing, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... not for several months aware how far his Prune Minister had gone on the Catholic question in Ireland. But those who were weary of Pitt's ascendancy, were, of course, interested in giving him this important information. The minister himself, wrapped in his austere self-reliance, did not volunteer explanations even to his Sovereign, and the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... sins, known only through their medium, but the skilful developement of which, subjects a female writer, and more particularly a youthful one, to ungenerous animadversion. It is to be hoped, that the friends of this gifted girl will so prune the luxuriance of her pen, as to leave nothing to detract from a work so creditable to ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... that is awful slang. But what can you expect of a 'freshie'? I've got to make the most of my time, too, you know, for when I get to be a junior I'll have to begin the 'prune and prism' act," retorted the girl with a roguish wink. "Then"— suddenly straightening herself, drawing down the corners of her mouth, crossing her eyes, and assuming the air of a would-be prude—"the prospective infraction ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... 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 particular star" round which her ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... Belfield outside of my own home. Nature, too, seemed tenderer of it than of other wildnesses, and had set the seal of her choice upon it with every gift of fern and vine and moss and lichen. No axe had invaded these solitudes for years except to prune away a too riotous undergrowth along the cart-path: the trees grew in grand natural aisles, and to look through the noble colonnade into mysterious vistas of copsewood gloom and stillness was for me to thrill with that blissful agony of youthful emotion which is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... old King turned the color of a ripe prune; every hair in that stubble of beard stood straight out from his chin, and he looked as if murder would be a pleasant thing. He took the glass and deliberately emptied the whisky on the floor. "John Carleton's son, eh? I might 'a' known it—yuh look ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower

... cast who 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

... pe d'aquelo haouto mountagno Oun se pinquo Castel-Cuille; Altenque lou poume, lou prune, l'amelle, Blanquejabon dens la campagno, Baci lou chan qu'on entendet, Un dimecres ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

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

... furbishing progresses, the new owner begins to get really acquainted with his place and discover what exists in the line of shrubs, trees, and vines. There may even be a few flowers that have survived years of neglect. If he is wise, he will prune and preserve all these as a nucleus. Around them he can ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... is in full growth, the nest labors of the Minims begin, and until the knobbed bodies are actually ripe, they never cease to weed and to prune, thus killing off the multitude of other fungi and foreign organisms, and by pruning they keep their particular fungus growing, and prevent it from fructifying. The fungus of the Attas is a particular species ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... got 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

... and Ismenodora seems already 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 fetters, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... question and answer session was led by Professor J.G. Moore, University of Wisconsin, on pruning. This brought out a very lively discussion about how to prune young orchards and what age of trees to plant for commercial orchards. This question was not settled, as some preferred one year old trees, while others would plant nothing but ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... about grandad and all the various and sundry uncles and forbears that earned us the name of being bad; it makes darn interesting stuff to tell now and then to some of the fellows who were raised in a prune orchard and will sit and listen with watering mouths and eyes goggling. I've been a hero, months on end, just for the things that my grandad did in the seventies. Of course," he pulled his lips into their whimsical smile, "I've touched up the family biography here and there ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... serve for a blood-letting to their Republic, and a little to evaporate the too vehement heat of their youth, to prune and clear the branches from the stock too luxuriant in wood; and to this end it was that they maintained so ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... filled up my callin' card.' "Say, do you know I've learned to love this Knibbs person. I used to think of him as a poor attic prune grinding away in his New York sky parlor, writing his verse of the things he longed for but had never known; until, one day, I met a fellow between Victorville and Cajon pass who knew His Knibbs, and come to find out this Knibbs is a regular fellow. ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... 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 ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... That may 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

... the different habits born of different social codes, He will show 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 stand ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope

... compositions, by throwing out the signs of our substantives which are essential to the English language. Nay, this humour of shortening our language had once run so far, that some of our celebrated authors, among whom we may reckon Sir Roger L'Estrange in particular, began to prune their words of all superfluous letters, as they termed them, in order to adjust the spelling to the pronunciation; which would have confounded all our etymologies, and have quite ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... yesterday William brought more than a dozen apple trees and cuttings, and is going to bring some young fig trees. Thus we shall have quite an orchard, if they grow, but the "if" is a big one. The people do not seem to take any trouble with their fruit trees and hardly ever prune them. Perhaps they are disheartened on account of the rats. Most of the orchards are a long way off in ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... and welcome, day! With night we banish sorrow. Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, 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 ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... he limped off on his red, white and blue rheumatism crutch. "And if the apple pie lady comes whistling along again, get her to make us a prune pudding," he said. ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis

... would he cry, "Delve, Delve the hole! And prune the tree, and trim the root! And stick the wig upon the pole, To scare the sparrows from ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger

... so excited about getting back that when Antonio left the corral gate open I never thought to speak to him. And Ruggles's Dynamo—they've let him run away again—just walked in and butted open the orchard bars and he's loose now eating the prune trees!" ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... 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

... the bath, and curl his hair, and we will sell him for a hundred piasters to Bacon or to Bungay. The rubbish is saleable enough, sir; and my advice to you is this: the next time you go home for a holiday, take 'Walter Lorraine' in your carpet-bag—give him a more modern air, prune away, though sparingly, some of the green passages, and add a little comedy, and cheerfulness, and satire, and that sort of thing, and then we'll take him to market, and sell him. The book is not a wonder of wonders, but it will do ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the contents of the valise upon the floor of Angus's bedroom—a loft over the kitchen in "A" Company's farm billet—and proceeded to prune Angus's personal effects. There were boots, socks, shaving-tackle, maps, packets of chocolate, and books of every size, but chiefly of the ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... should be planted early in spring on a south or south-west wall, and may be increased by seeds, by budding, or by grafting. The profuse brilliant orange-coloured berries of the C. Lelandii (Mespilus) ensures it a place on walls and trellises. A sunny position gives best results. Prune ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... Huntsman said, Advancing from the hazel shade. The maid, alarmed, with hasty oar, Pushed her light shallop from the shore, 400 And when a space was gained between, Closer she drew her bosom's screen— So forth the startled swan would swing, So turn to prune his ruffled wing. Then safe, though fluttered and amazed, 405 She paused, and on the stranger gazed. Not his the form, nor his the eye, That ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... peace should 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

... is understood that either he, or some other member of the 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 time of frost;—he will do a hundred useful and ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... 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 ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey

... ships should traverse the globe in 1778, to confirm to the Russian empire the possession of near thirty degrees, or above six hundred miles, of continent, which Mr Engel, in his zeal for the practicability of a north-east passage, would prune away from the length of Asia to the eastward. See his Alanoires Geographiques, &c. Lausanne 1765; which, however, contains much real information, and many parts of which are confirmed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... BLOOM: (In flunkey's prune plush coat and kneebreeches, buff stockings and powdered wig) I'm afraid not, sir. The ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... for administering corporal punishment, used by mothers and land-ladies. "The Festive Board" may be a shingle, a hair-brush a fish-hash breakfast or a stewed prune supper. ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz

... ethical views which Miss Cleveland gives bravely, although they are not invariably rendered with the felicity and pointed phrase which come from a careful selection of words and symbols. She is a little dazzled by the flowers and fruitage of a fancy which most of us are compelled to curb and prune to meet the requisitions of time and space. These papers were prepared chiefly, the dedication tells us, for schools and colleges, and a little of the pedantry and ample leisure of a teacher who has his audience safe under his own control is apparent in them. Little goes without saying; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... 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, from the dance Not ceasing, but suspense, in silent pause, List'ning, till ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... 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

... yet, 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 ...
— Standard Selections • Various



Words linked to "Prune" :   crop, clip, snip, do away with, disbud, prune cake, pruner, rationalise, get rid of, shear, extinguish, trim, top, prune whip, thin out, eliminate, dried fruit, pinch, cut back, rationalize, cut, pruning, dress



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