pine
Pluralpines
Pluralpines
- 1An evergreen coniferous tree of the genus Pinus, with needle-shaped leaves and woody cones, or a similar tree also commonly called a pine.
Wind hissed through the pines above the campsite.
The ridge is forested mostly with pine, with a few stands of aspen near the creek.
UsageSay pines for single trees, and a slope covered in pine for a whole forest.
- 2The wood obtained from pine trees.
The cabin's floors are knotty pine, worn smooth by decades of boots.
Pine takes stain unevenly, so many woodworkers apply a conditioner first.
UsageOften before a noun: a pine table, pine floors.
Similarpinewood
- 3To long intensely for someone or something absent or lost, often to the point of suffering; to grieve for.
Many emigrants pine for a homeland they can no longer return to.
He spent the whole summer pining for a girl who barely knew his name.
UsageUsually pine for someone or something absent.
Note
Long and yearn are close, but pine adds the suffering, which is why Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch (1969) turns it into a joke when the shopkeeper says a plainly dead parrot is "probably pining."
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch first aired in 1969. montypython.com
- The shopkeeper describes the parrot as “probably pining”; the quoted words are exact. en.wiktionary.org
- The parrot in the sketch is dead. en.wikipedia.org
- 4The bench on which players sit while they are not in the game.
After two fumbles, the rookie was riding the pine for the rest of the game.
A star in college, he spent three seasons gathering splinters on the pine.
UsageUsually the pine: ride the pine, sit on the pine.
Similarbench
Less common meanings
- 5To languish, growing weak and thin or wasting away through grief or distress.
Prisoners held for years in damp, dark cells often pine away, losing weight and strength.
Cut off from her family, she pined away until she was little more than skin and bone.
UsageOften pine away: she pined away from grief.
Note
The pining in the carol "Oh Holy Night" is this one: in John Sullivan Dwight's 1855 translation the world lay "in sin and error pining," wasting under its trouble rather than wishing for anything. The line is easy to hear as the "longing" meaning. Poets used it of flowers too, as in Thomas Tickell's "the roses wither and the lilies pine."
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- John Sullivan Dwight made the English version of the carol. wisemusicclassical.com
- The carol says that the world lay “in sin and error pining.” en.wikisource.org
- The carol's “pining” illustrates languishing under distress. en.wiktionary.org
- Thomas Tickell used “pine” of flowers in the quoted line. upload.wikimedia.org
- 6A painful longing for someone or something.
Note
The archaic noun descends from an old word for pain and torment, possibly borrowed from Latin poena, punishment, when Christianity reached the Germanic peoples; pain itself is a cousin. The noun has faded, but its ache survives in the verb of longing: today one pines for something rather than feeling a pine.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- The noun descends from a Germanic word meaning pain and torment. en.wiktionary.org
- The Germanic word possibly came from Latin poena, meaning punishment. en.wiktionary.org
- The proposed borrowing accompanied the spread of Christianity to Germanic peoples. en.wiktionary.org
- Pain is etymologically related to this noun. en.wiktionary.org
- The verb of longing derives from the same noun. en.wiktionary.org
- 7The tropical fruit usually called a pineapple.
She sliced a pine into wedges and served it with the grilled fish.
Roadside stalls outside Georgetown sell pines and coconuts by the dozen.
Similarpineapple
Note
The fruit's name is a shortening of pineapple, still everyday in the Caribbean, Guyana, South Africa and Australia and old-fashioned elsewhere. Older fiction slips between the two forms: in Thackeray's Vanity Fair a pine-apple is bought and Rebecca has "never tasted a pine," and Katherine Mansfield's "Prelude" (1918) calls the same fruit pineapple and then pine.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- Pine, meaning the fruit, is a shortening of pineapple. cdn.wildapricot.com
- William Makepeace Thackeray wrote Vanity Fair. gutenberg.org
- Vanity Fair describes a purchased pine-apple and reports that Rebecca had never tasted a pine; the quoted wording is exact. gutenberg.org
- Katherine Mansfield wrote Prelude, first published in 1918. smith.edu
- Prelude calls the same fruit pineapple and subsequently pine. americanliterature.com
- 8
- 9To cause pain to someone; to torment.
Similartorment, torture, afflict, hurt
Note
Here the verb keeps its Old English meaning: pīnian meant to torment, and it comes from the same root as the old noun for painful longing. Joseph Hall's The Breathings of the Devout Soul (1648) uses it in the passive, right beside its synonym: "one is pined in prison; another, tortured on the rack."
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- The tormenting sense preserves the meaning of Old English pīnian. en.wiktionary.org
- The verb shares its root with the archaic noun pine meaning painful longing. en.wiktionary.org
- Joseph Hall wrote The Breathings of the Devout Soul, published in 1648. quod.lib.umich.edu
- Hall's text contains the quoted wording, using pined passively beside tortured. archive.org
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
Latin pīnus passed into Proto-West Germanic as *pīnā, giving Old English *pīne and Middle English pyne. Pinus is a doublet, and fat may be a relative.
Middle English pyne, pine probably goes back to Old English *pīne ("pain") and Proto-West Germanic *pīnā, a word for "pain, torment, torture." That word may come from Latin poena ("punishment"), itself from Ancient Greek poinḗ ("penalty, fine, bloodmoney"), and it reached Germanic along with Christianity. Pain is related, as are Old Norse pína, Old High German pīnōn and Middle Dutch pinen.
The Proto-West Germanic noun *pīnā ("pain, torment, torture") produced the verb *pīnōn, which became Old English pīnian ("to torment") and Middle English pynen. German peinigen ("to torment, torture") and Icelandic pína ("to torment") are related.