olive tree
9
1.4
- noun
- /ˈɑlɪv tri/
- After the harvest, the farmers carefully gathered the olives from the olive trees to produce high-quality oil.
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Watch on YouTubeFor the Romans, their empire included lands where olive trees didn't grow and where wine grapes didn't flourish.
- For the Romans, their empire included lands where olive trees didn't grow and where wine grapes didn't flourish.
- It was made out of an olive tree from from Israel.
Examples
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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.
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It was made out of an olive tree from from Israel.
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And what are those conditions that make for the best olive tree production of olives?
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But more to the point, it was very good for olive trees and for grapevines.
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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
16
1.0
A small evergreen tree that produces edible fruit and oil
1
4.7
An evergreen tree that produces olives used for food and oil
1
3.2
An evergreen tree that grows in the Mediterranean and produces olives for food and oil
How Fruitful
1
3.2
9
1.4
Surface Forms
Morphology
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.