UNDERGROWTH

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does undergrowth mean? 

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

1. the brush (small trees and bushes and ferns etc.) growing beneath taller trees in a wood or forest

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNDERGROWTH (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The brush (small trees and bushes and ferns etc.) growing beneath taller trees in a wood or forest

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

underbrush; undergrowth; underwood

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

brush; brushwood; coppice; copse; thicket (a dense growth of bushes)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "undergrowth"):

ground cover; groundcover (small plants other than saplings growing on a forest floor)

Holonyms ("undergrowth" is a member of...):

forest; wood; woods (the trees and other plants in a large densely wooded area)

 Context examples 

And he could hear the crashing of their bodies through the undergrowth, and the noises they made in the night.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

In that direction the country was still thickly wooded, with so much undergrowth that our progress was very slow.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

High, leafless trees girt it in on three sides, with a thick undergrowth of holly between their trunks.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

There where you see light-green rushes instead of dark-green undergrowth, there between the great cotton woods, that is my private gate into the unknown.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)