growth ring
1
3.8
- noun
- /ɡroʊθ rɪŋ/
- Specialized
:
anillo de crecimiento
- While I was there, someone sent in an otolith with 7 annual growth rings taken from a cod caught in the Irish Sea (as I recall; so a different stock, but still...).
- growth rings in a tree
- annual growth rings
- count the growth rings
Examples
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When coral grows, it produces both daily growth rings and annual growth rings, so you can tell from a piece of coral how many days are in a year.
Blog text (15) -
Study of the bones shows no growth ring patterns that would indicate dormant periods similar to those of trees.
Blog text (20) -
Some trees have two growth rings or sometimes more, and with a little
Blog text (14) -
Some years have two growth rings or sometimes more, leaving your tree ring evidence as false.
Blog text (14) -
When coral grows, it produces both daily growth rings and annual growth rings, so you can tell from a piece of coral how many days are in a year.
Blog text (15) -
There are very few meteorological stations, and instrumental records from glaciers, lakes, or tree growth rings are rare and difficult to interpret.
Blog text (2) -
By measuring the annual growth rings on the mussel shells, Chatters was able to infer past water temperatures, which influence growth rate.
Academic text (1995) -
Those thin layers of plaster, somewhat like the growth rings in a tree, trap traces of activity in a well-defined temporal sequence.
Academic text (2006) -
I shared an office with a guy who was interested in the age structure of cod stocks and who used the annual growth rings on cod otoliths (inner ear bones) to get a handle on this.
Blog text (26) -
Scientists can determine the age of a tree by counting its growth rings in the cross-section of the trunk.
Synonyms
A ring of wood in a tree trunk that shows one year's growth
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is transparently compositional: 'growth' (increase/annual development) modifies 'ring' (a circular layer), so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer it denotes a circular layer formed by a year’s growth in a tree. This is a straightforward noun–noun compound describing a physical feature and the concept of tree rings is widespread across languages, making the meaning easily predictable.
Etymology
Growth ring comes from a simple image: when you cut across a tree trunk you see many rings, and each growth ring is the layer of wood the tree made in one year. So, by counting growth rings you can tell a tree's 'age', and wide or narrow rings can show a 'good' or 'bad' growing year.