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Spruce   /sprus/   Listen
Spruce

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



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"Spruce" Quotes from Famous Books



... wings, as you may choose to call them, stretching more than twenty feet from tip to tip; every volition of yours extending as perfectly into them as if your spinal cord ran down the centre strip of your boat, and the nerves of your arms tingled as far as the broad blades of your oars,—oars of spruce, balanced, leathered, and ringed under your own special direction. This, in sober earnest, is the nearest approach to flying that man has ever made or perhaps ever will make. As the hawk sails without flapping ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... late years been introduced'. The teapot and the mug of ale jointly possessed the breakfast table, and meat and pudding smoked on the board every noon. Formerly one might see at church what was the cut of a coat half a century ago, now dress was spruce and modern.[481] As a proof of the spirit of improvement among farmers, Marshall instances the custom in the Midlands of placing their sons as pupils on other farms to widen their experience. 'Their entertainments are as expensive as they ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... superfine Hopkins, how different from the personage we saw but lately plunging like a maniac at the fire-bell! Could it have been thee, Hopkins? Is it possible that anything so spruce, dignified, almost stately, could have fallen so very low? We fear it is too true, for human nature not unfrequently furnishes instances of tremendous contrast, just as material nature sometimes furnishes the spectacle ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... have been granted a new lease of life and may be found moored at the wharfs, beached on the marine railways, or anchored in the stream, eagerly awaiting their turn to refit. It is a matter of vital concern that the freight on spruce boards from Bangor to New York has increased to five dollars a thousand feet. Many of these craft belong to grandfatherly skippers who dared not venture past Cape Cod in December, lest the venerable Matilda ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... hard woods which may be added to the list. Sugar, particularly, is a good-working wood, but maple is more difficult. Spruce, on the other hand, is the strongest and toughest wood, considering its weight, which is but a little ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe


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