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Prune   /prun/   Listen
Prune

verb
(past & past part. pruned; pres. part. pruning)
1.
Cultivate, tend, and cut back the growth of.  Synonyms: clip, crop, cut back, dress, lop, snip, trim.
2.
Weed out unwanted or unnecessary things.  Synonyms: cut, rationalise, rationalize.



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"Prune" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 after them. ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... much nourishment in dates, figs (those dried round are better than layer figs) and raisins. Pitted dates and seedless raisins are best for light outfits. And do not despise the humble prune; buy the best grade in the market (unknown to landladies) and soak over night before stewing; it will be a revelation. Take a variety of dried fruits, and mix them in different combinations, sweet and tart, so as not to have ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

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

... the leafy lane Looked city-ward, then stooped to prune again Her vines and simples, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... clashed 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 they in trust on aweless Ares' might, While ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus

... out. The garden gates were kept locked, and no one entered but the men who went there in the daytime to prune the trees and water the flowers and keep the place in order. Not even Suo might go into the garden to mourn beside the body of ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle

... even to build the slight house needed in that climate without running into debt. For borrowed money they had to pay from two to three per cent, per month interest. Moreover, none of them were farmers; and they had to learn to cultivate, prune, and take care of their vines, to make wine, and to make a vegetable garden. They had from the first to raise and sell enough for their own support, and to pay at least the heavy interest on their debts. It resulted that for some ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... off early, and the girls are baking. I'm going down presently to make some poppy-seed bread for Olaf. He asked for prune preserves at breakfast, and I told him I was out of them, and to bring some prunes and honey and cloves ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... steal his legs I don't b'lieve he'd holler 'Stop thief!' but when it comes to my fruit, as I'm that proud on it grieves me to see it picked, walking over the wall night after night, I feel sometimes as it's no good to prune and train, ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... me a fair profit. So I had to go under or spread out. Well, I've spread,—flour mills in Minnesota, canning factories from Portland, Oregon, to Bridgeton, Maine, potato farms in Michigan and the Aroostook, cracker and bread bakeries, creameries, raisin and prune plantations,—all that sort of thing,—until gradually I've weeded out most of the greedy middlemen who stood between me and my customers. They're poor folks, most of 'em, and when they trade with me their slim wages go further than in most ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford

... VI as imperfect, they accused the Reformers, some of them openly, but all in their private opinions, of having gone too far; and while they were willing to keep down (and if they could not reduce him to a primacy of honor to keep out) the Pope, and to prune away the innovations in doctrine brought in under the Papal domination, they were zealous to restore the hierarchy, and to substitute the authority of the Fathers, Canonists and Councils of the first six or seven centuries, and the least Papistic of the later Doctors and Schoolmen, ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... soup; 3 saltines; Swiss cheese and rye bread sandwich; 1 square butter; prune whip, soft custard sauce; ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... 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 ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... are in the way, that are injured or diseased. For the most part, the branches should be removed when they are small; but it is not possible to foresee all that may be needed in the training of the tree and, therefore, the frequent advice to prune only with a hand-knife cannot be followed. One needs a sharp pruning-saw and sometimes a chisel on a long handle. Usually it is not necessary to remove branches more than an inch or one and one-half inch in diameter if pruning is carefully ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey

... the swarming street, They who chase the mountain-boar, Or, where cliff and billow meet, Prune the vine or pull the oar, With a stroke Break their yoke; Slaves but yestereve were they— Freemen with ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... Raleigh spake; Or bid the new be English, ages hence, (For use will farther what's begot by sense) Pour the full tide of eloquence along, } Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong, } Rich with the treasures of each foreign tongue; } Prune the luxuriant, the uncouth refine, But show no mercy to an empty line: Then polish all, with so much life and ease, You think 'tis nature, and a knack to please: "But ease in writing flows from art, not chance; As those move easiest who ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... 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 ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... Asiatics with reference to what is prehistoric ages to Europeans, to show that the latter have themselves anything like trustworthy data as regards their own racial history. And that settled, he may have the leisure and capacity to help his ethnic neighbours to prune their genealogical trees. Our Rajputs, among others, have perfectly trustworthy family records of an unbroken lineal descent through 2,000 years "B.C." and more, as proved by Colonel Tod; records which are accepted by the British Government in its official dealings with them. It is not ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... host was a little stout man, but still very like Senor Justo himself. For instance, I always gloried in likening the latter to a dried prune; then, to conceive of his plump brother, imagine him boiled, and so swell out the creases in his skin, and ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... Mirabella of the Faery Queen, and his own late and happy marriage in Ireland, are also brought in to supply materials for the Legend of Courtesy. So multifarious is the poem, full of all that he thought, or observed, or felt; a receptacle, without much care to avoid repetition, or to prune, correct, and condense, for all the abundance of his ideas, as they welled forth in his mind day by day. It is really a collection of separate tales and allegories, as much as the Arabian Nights, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... poor old prune. (Crossing to ABU, garrulously.) How are you, Sheik? Our little ward, Rose, is so young and foolish! But I was just that innocent when I was in the chorus. When I came out of it, believe me, I was a different woman. (Enter ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... speak in harmony with God's glory, 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 we can reckon absolutely ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... hues of the almond tree, clothed with pink blossoms, the scarlet flowering pomegranate, the dark, rich green of the orange-tree, already spangled over with small white blossoms, yet still laden with its golden fruit, and the prune trees of Elvas, favorites through the world, leafless as yet, but conspicuous by the clouds of white flowerets which covered them. The roofs of the suburban quintas showed themselves here and there above the orchards, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... dhrawn ar-roun' th' sthreets iv Paris in a chariot pulled be eight white horses amid cries iv 'Veev Higgins,' 'Abase Castile,' et cethra, fr'm th' populace. An' manny a heart beats proud in Goshen that night. That's th' way ye think iv it, but it happens diff'rent, Hinnissy. Th' soap king, th' prune king, an' th' porous plaster king fr'm here won't stir up anny tumult in Paris this year. Th' chances ar-re th' prisidint won't know they're there, an' no wan'll speak to thim but a cab dhriver, an' he'll say: 'Th' fare fr'm th' Changs All Easy to ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne

... the protests of their elders delay their going. It was a 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 ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... the Drina to the 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 with ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... known as "the man who painted peasants without wrinkles in their breeches." Not because wrinkles were too much for him, nor because they were not thought worth while, but because, in his effort to prune his picture of the unessentials, ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... blanched, cover it close, and put to it two or three blades of large mace, with some strong mutton or beef broth, some sack or white-wine, and some slices of interlarded bacon, scum it when it boils, and put to it large mace, nutmeg, ginger, pepper, raisins, two or three whole cloves, currans, prune, sage-leaves, saffron, and divers cherries; stew it well, and serve it in a fine clean scoured dish, ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May

... 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

... chopped dates or raisins, figs, and nuts. Press the prunes into symmetrical shape, then roll them in fine granulated sugar. (The Parisian Sweet mixture may be used for stuffing prunes.) Prunes may also be stuffed with marshmallows. One half of a marshmallow should be inserted in each cooked and seeded prune. ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer

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

... 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 ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman

... sometimes narrowly escaped being a genius, and that he might have crossed the boundary line into genius-land, if he had confined his attention to one department of literature and had been willing to write at less breakneck speed, taking time and thought to prune, revise, and suppress more of his productions. Not a few, however, think that Lowell, in spite of his defects, has left the impress of genius on some of his work. When his sonnet, Our Love is not a Fading Earthly Flower, was read to a cultured group, some ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... Cantorum. He 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 enthralling her domestic ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... to reopen and to make anew; their early fruits to gather, to bring to market, with their green crops of vegetables; their cattle, sheep, calves, fowls; (most of them prisoners,) and poultry to look after; their vines, as they shoot rampantly in the summer heat, to prune, and thin out the leaves when they are too thick; and any one may imagine what a scene of incessant labour it is."—Rural and Domestic Life in ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... 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. ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... 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 is ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... 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 pure ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... 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

... 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 ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... sputum almost 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.

... come 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 ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... 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 ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... 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 in March. ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... not, carnal man," said the King, peevishly. "Dreams are the gifts of the saints, and are not granted to such as thou! Dost thou think that, in the prune of my manhood, I could have youth and beauty forced on my sight, and hear man's law and man's voice say, 'They are thine, and thine only,' and not feel that war was brought to my hearth, and a snare set on my bed, and that ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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

... 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

... friends—now and then, however, with characteristic 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... above should be added fifteen seconds, which is the slice of eternity needed to trim, prune and chasten our mustache, which is not a ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... people; ye have no portion, right, nor memorial in God's Jerusalem." If the begun work vex them, it is no wonder; it does prognosticate the ruin of their kingdom, and that Haman, who hath begun to fall before the seed of the Jews, shall fall totally: the Lord is about to prune His vineyard, and to drive out the foxes that eat the tender grapes; to pluck up bastard plants, and to whip buyers and sellers out of the temple. The Lord is about to strike the Gehazis with leprosy, and to bring low the Simon Maguses who were ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... I was startled," said her husband. "Almost those very words—mark me, almost those very words—had been said to me when I was working in the wonderful gardens of Nebuchadnezzar, and he was standing by me watching me prune a rose-bush. That Maria Edgeworth and the great Nebuchadnezzar should have said the same thing to me ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton

... 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 ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

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

... 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

... why so harsh? why with remorseless knife Home to the stem prune back each bough and bud? I thought the task of education was To strengthen, not to crush; to train and feed Each subject toward fulfilment of its nature, According to the mind of God, revealed In laws, congenital with every kind ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... open 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 freely after the second year. Lime in the soil and manure are fatal to it as well as to rhododendrons and azaleas. All they require is a mulch of leaves kept on winter and ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... 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 ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower

... think the Critics, in particular, must approve of it highly; As it is written up to the Strictest Nicety of Dramatic Rules. Against the next Night, Mr. Pasquin, you must omit, or alter some exceptionable Expressions, And, if you were to prune a few Redundances, the whole Piece wou'd be the ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin

... well patronized, but an immense quantity of candy and preserved fruits is sold by the wandering peddlers, who manufacture and dispose of their good things wherever they find customers. Preserved lychee, a fruit that looks like a small prune, and like it is stewed in sirup, is a great favorite; and the coolies in the foreign quarters, while resting under their burdens, are not backward in disposing of a saucer of sweetmeats obtained from the nearest peddler. These sweetmeats, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... work are required in vineyards at different seasons. In spring they prepare the soil; in summer they prune and tie up the vine branches; and in autumn all the joyous labour of the vintage comes suddenly on. Looking to the circumstance in the parable, that the labourers who began early counted much on having borne the heat of the day, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... 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

... with themselves proceed The men, who write such verse as we can read! Their own strict judges, not a word they spare, That wants or force, or light, or weight, or care; Pour the full tide of eloquence along, Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong; Prune the luxuriant, the uncouth refine, But show no mercy to an empty line; Then polish all with so much life and ease, You think 'tis nature, and a knack to please; But ease in writing flows from art, not chance, As those move easiest who ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... thy soul, Thou dost possess a will, Then why not prune these noxious sprouts, With ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young

... 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

... cares to help me with aught, all being too busy with their own affairs. It falls on me to till the fields, which, scanty as they are, are more than my feeble strength can compass unaided. Alone I must prune and water the vines, bring in the firewood, and go out and in by night and day to earn a scanty living for this afflicted one and myself. You will hear, perchance, mischief laid to my charge in this village of evil speakers and lazy folk. They hate me because I am no gadabout to spend time ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... pages with all the tenderness characteristic of one who loves what he 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 in mistaking him for the portrait of a man, but that his lips moved; ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various

... 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 garden? By the survival of ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... Smoor'd, smothered. Smoutie, smutty. Smytrie, a small collection; a litter. Snakin, sneering. Snap smart. Snapper, to stumble. Snash, abuse. Snaw, snow. Snaw-broo, snow-brew (melted snow). Sned, to lop, to prune. Sneeshin mill, a snuff-box. Snell, bitter, biting. Snick, a latch; snick-drawing scheming; he weel a snick can draw he is good at cheating. Snirtle, to snigger. Snoods, fillets worn by maids. Snool, to cringe, to snub. Snoove, to go slowly. Snowkit, snuffed. Sodger, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

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

... passions, and of 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 ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... peaceful home? It's the lure of the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid. Last night before I went to bed, read over my copy of Ferlini's letters, to gain courage. Gained it for a little; but when I think of that desert I'm supposed to turn into a happy playground for trippers, and not a tent hired or a prune bought, or an egg laid, for all I know, I wish Anthony and I had let Lark ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... savage chief of savage men. My father was a reverent man, who feared great Jupiter, and brought the rural deities his offerings of fruits ad flowers. He dwelt among the vine-clad rocks and olive groves at the foot of Helicon. My early life ran quiet as the brook by which I sported. I was taught to prune the vine, to tend the flock; and then, at noon, I gathered my sheep beneath the shade, and played upon the shepherd's flute. I had a friend, the son of our neighbor; we led our flocks to the same pasture, and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

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

... protested his wife. "Of all the softies! You haven't backbone enough for a prune. And if my orders to my own son ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... Lucretius worked 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 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 rate of a line a week." Dickens, one of the greatest writers of modern fiction, was so worn down ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... 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 sheltered ravines ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... Prune thou thy words; the thoughts control That o'er thee swell and throng; They will condense within thy soul, And ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... that the paper system 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, ...
— 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

... methods of the French Emperor. The Swiss reformer sought to train the mind to observe, reflect, and think; to assist the faculties in attaining their fullest and freest expression; and thus to add to the richness and variety of human thought. The French imperial system sought to prune away all mental independence, and to train the young generation in neat and serviceable espalier methods: all aspiring shoots, especially in the sphere of moral and political science, were sharply cut down. Consequently French thought, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... proportion of other species, such as cedar, tamarack, spruce, lodgepole pine and Douglas fir, so there is no object in trying to produce an absolutely pure stand. Some authorities think that 60 per cent of pine, with the rest helping to prune it, is ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... prepared. Begin slowly. Be modest. Speak distinctly. Address all your hearers. Be uniformly courteous. Prune your sentences. Cultivate mental alertness. Conceal your method. Be scrupulously clear. Feel sure of yourself. Look your audience in the eyes. Be direct. Favor your deep tones. Speak deliberately. Get to your facts. Be earnest. Observe your ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser

... these poets was twofold: they had not only to prune and purify their dialect and produce verses, they had also to find readers, to create a public, to begin a propaganda. The first means adopted was the publication of the Armana prouvencau, already referred to. In 1855, five hundred copies were issued, in 1894, twelve thousand. For ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... That is, prune off its branches; and another adage is to this effect: "Short boughs, long vintage." The constant blooming of the gorse has given rise ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... of the four, an old space-buster with a face wrinkled like a dried prune, burned by cosmic rays and the suns of worlds so far away they were scarcely credible, had taken command. Suddenly, Old Dunbar had known where they were. Suddenly, Dunbar ...
— To Each His Star • Bryce Walton

... mild. Mat over tulip beds, begin 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 ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... found that the true source 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

... 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

... 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

... natural blooming season for all the best varieties. For 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

... 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 ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... Chicken with Bread Stuffing, Giblet Gravy. Boiled Rice. Saute Egg Plant. Stuffed Green Peppers. Prune Pudding. Black Coffee. ...
— Prepare and Serve a Meal and Interior Decoration • Lillian B. Lansdown

... 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

... rake; flute, lute; pearl, earl; plane, lane; wheel, heel; spine, pine; trout, rout; prune, rune. ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various

... great 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 be ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews

... 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, as in Ethiopia, than to ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... is simply a plum having certain qualities not possessed by all plums. All prunes are plums, but not all plums are prunes. The final test as to whether a plum is a prune is the ability to dry without fermenting with the pit still remaining in the fruit. If a plum cannot dry without fermentation unless the pit is removed, it is not a prune. Prunes for drying, like other fruits, should be ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray

... Bianca, in 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," "To Sunset," "To the Bat," ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... uncle's teaching, this is Worcester, Malevolent to you in all aspects; Which makes him prune himself, and bristle up The crest ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... 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 any ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang

... family, vowed to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, nurse the sick, comfort the dying, and instruct the ignorant. Like the Fathers of the Society of Jesuits, those skilled, patient, wise tillers in the soil of the human mind, their daily task is to hoe and tend, and prune and train, and water the young green things growing in what to them is the Garden of God, and to other good and even holy people, the vineyard of the devil. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... it were my fault. Why didn't you plant them earlier? I don't believe you know any of the tricks of your profession, James. You never seem to graft anything or prune anything, and I'm sure you don't know how to cut a slip. James, why don't you prune more? Prune now—I should like to watch you. Where's your pruning-hook? You can't possibly do it with ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... drink greedily whole canfuls of the bitter rain water. At last Raleigh's own turn comes; running on deck in a squall, he gets wet through, and has twenty days of burning fever; 'never man suffered a more furious heat,' during which he eats nothing but now and then a stewed prune. ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... vigilant judgment is most wanting: while safe and sober Dulness observes one tedious and insipid round of tiresome uniformity, and steers equally clear of eccentricity and of beauty. Dulness has few redundancies to retrench, few luxuriancies to prune, and few irregularities to smooth. These, though errors, are the errors of Genius, for there is rarely redundancy without plenitude, or irregularity without greatness. The excesses of Genius may easily ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More

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

... the 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 to their morning ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... 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

... developed, too, the naturally small, hard, dry, sour prune and transformed it into a juicy, sweet fruit that is bigger and more ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit." This purging is another process quite contrary to nature, for the term signifies an inward cleansing. A vine-dresser can prune or trim a branch and thereby practically make it clean outwardly from all unnecessary or harmful sprouts which would hinder it from bearing fruit, but there is no known natural process by which the grafted branch could have its inward conditions ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers

... in the Hall. The general he got mair nairvous, and his leddy mair melancholy every day, and yet there wasna any quarrel or bickering between them, for when they've been togither in the breakfast room I used often tae gang round and prune the rose-tree alongside o' the window, so that I couldna help hearin' a great pairt o' their conversation, ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... old chap. Nothing like bed—I'm going myself in a minute or two. Don't you sit up, Anna. Anywhere's good enough for me. I'll sleep in the greenhouse—eh, what? Your gardener'll find a new specimen in the morning and get fits. Mind he don't prune me, though. I can't afford to lose much at my time of life. You go to bed, Anna, and dream of little Willy. He's going to make your fortune on Thursday—good old Lodestar, some of 'em'll feel the draught, you bet. Don't spoil your complexion on my account, Anna. You go ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... Over all other creatures that possess Earth, air, and sea. Then let us not think hard One easy prohibition, who enjoy Free leave so large to all things else, and choice Unlimited of manifold delights: But let us ever praise him, and extol His bounty, following our delightful task, To prune these growing plants, and tend these flowers, Which were it toilsome, yet with thee were sweet. To whom thus Eve replied. O thou for whom And from whom I was formed, flesh of thy flesh, And without whom am to no end, my guide And head! what thou hast said is just and right. For we to him indeed ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... more. "Then, no doubt, he has pruned away half the garden shrubs. Old Jerry always is seized with a desire to prune things, the moment ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... 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

... the same principle, I think, which we discover in pruning. If we prune heavily during the dormant season, the effect is increased vegetative growth. If we wish to stimulate the growth of an old tree somewhat debilitated, we go to work and cut off a large portion of the top. We don't disturb the root. The effect is that with the same amount of pushing power from the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association

... euery other outward or inward alley, you shall plant, the Wheate-plumbe, both yealow & redde, the Rye-plumbe, the Damson, the Horse-clog, Bulleys of all kindes, ordinary french Cherryes, Filberts, and Nuts of all sorts, together with the Prune-plumbe, and other such like stone fruits. But if your Orchard be of state and prospect, so that it containe eight quarters or more (according to the limitation of the earth) then you shall in euery seuerall quarter plant a seuerall fruit, as Apple-trees in one quarter, Peares in another, Quinces ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham

... I prune potato-trees and artichokes, I wonder, And cultivate the silo-plant, which springs (I hope it springs?) In graceful foliage overhead?—Excuse me if I blunder, It's really inconvenient not to ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... Vnckles teaching. This is Worcester Maleuolent to you in all Aspects: Which makes him prune himselfe, and bristle vp The crest of Youth ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... life had Rollo seen such a strange woman as Miss Myra Stark. She was very pale except her lips, which were painted a rich prune colour; her yellow hair was cut very like Rollo's except that it had no curl. Her smock was of coarse burlap with a skirt of ...
— Rollo in Society - A Guide for Youth • George S. Chappell

... 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

... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville



Words linked to "Prune" :   thin out, eliminate, pollard, poll, shear, dried fruit, disbud, pinch, top, extinguish, do away with, pruning, get rid of



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