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olive tree

olive tree

8 1.4
A small tree that keeps its leaves all year and makes olives for food and oil
  • noun
  • /ˈɑlɪv tri/
translation icon : olivo
  • After the harvest, the farmers carefully gathered the olives from the olive trees to produce high-quality oil.

For the Romans, their empire included lands where olive trees didn't grow and where wine grapes didn't flourish.

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Examples

  • Our orchards comprise one of the largest old-growth plantings of olive trees in North America.

    Blog text (7)
  • "Nahum and Sara walk far from the city, among the old olive trees in the Valley of the Cross."

    Fiction book (1993)
  • And it's just olive trees all over the place.

  • It was made out of an olive tree from from Israel.

  • And what are those conditions that make for the best olive tree production of olives?

  • But more to the point, it was very good for olive trees and for grapevines.

  • Two figures pick the olives in the olive trees, a woman and a man.

    Academic text (1993)
  • Just inside the gates, we waited in the shadows of the olive trees.

    Fiction book (1997)
  • The twisted olive trees seem to struggle to maintain their hold in the heaving landscape.

    Academic text (1993)
  • We skimmed groves of ancient olive trees and ribs of bleached white stone.

    Academic text (2000)

Synonyms

olive
vsolive tree
40 1.0

A small evergreen tree that produces edible fruit and oil

is the botanical genus label used to name and classify these trees
Olea europaea
vsolive tree
  • Specialized
4.7

An evergreen tree that produces olives used for food and oil

is the broader genus term that includes this cultivated species
European olive tree
vsolive tree
3.2

An evergreen tree that grows in the Mediterranean and produces olives for food and oil

is the general genus name covering this and related species

How Fruitful

olive tree
8 1.4

Surface Forms

olive tree singular
olive trees plural

Morphology

olive + tree

The meaning 'a tree that produces olives' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'olive' (the fruit/tree) with 'tree' (a perennial woody plant). This noun–noun compounding is a straightforward, compositional pattern found across languages, so a B1 learner who knows both words will readily understand the MWE.

Etymology

Olive tree names the tree that makes the olive fruit and the oil people use for food and light; farmers in the Mediterranean have grown the olive tree for thousands of years for those olives and their oil. Because these trees live a long time and give useful oil, they became a sign of 'peace' and 'long life', which helps explain why the name refers to this particular small tree today.