SAPLING

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does sapling mean? 

• SAPLING (noun)
  The noun SAPLING has 1 sense:

1. young tree

  Familiarity information: SAPLING used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SAPLING (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Young tree

Classified under:

Nouns denoting plants

Hypernyms ("sapling" is a kind of...):

tree (a tall perennial woody plant having a main trunk and branches forming a distinct elevated crown; includes both gymnosperms and angiosperms)

 Context examples 

As he sank back with it between his teeth, he kept his eye on the sapling.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

The Spanish research team took saplings of commercially grown Adige Lamuyo peppers and grafted these onto wild peppers.

(Grafting helps pepper plants deal with drought, SciDev.Net)

Forest areas near villages where biogas was used had higher biomass, sapling abundance and species diversity compared with forest plots near villages without biogas.

(Shift to biogas helps revive forests, SciDev.Net)

However vigorous the sapling, said Mrs. Micawber, shaking her head, I cannot forget the parent-tree; and when our race attains to eminence and fortune, I own I should wish that fortune to flow into the coffers of Britannia.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I looked desperately round for some rock or tree, but I was in a bushy jungle with nothing higher than a sapling within sight, while I knew that the creature behind me could tear down an ordinary tree as though it were a reed.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

As she spoke, she sprang herself into the shallow stream and ran swiftly up the centre of it, with the brown water bubbling over her feet and her hand out-stretched toward the clinging branches of bramble or sapling.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The sapling remained bent above him.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

The strength of the parents seemed to be limitless, for one of them, having some difficulty in reaching a bunch of foliage which grew upon a considerable-sized tree, put his fore-legs round the trunk and tore it down as if it had been a sapling.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

At once the sapling shot up, and after that gave no more trouble, remaining in the decorous and perpendicular position in which nature had intended it to grow.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Then, between them, the she-wolf and One Eye devoured the game which the mysterious sapling had caught for them.

(White Fang, by Jack London)