Prune vs Abridge - What's the difference?
prune | abridge |
(obsolete) A plum.
The dried, wrinkled fruit of certain species of plum.
(slang) An old woman, especially a wrinkly one.
To remove excess material from a tree or shrub; to trim, especially to make more healthy or productive.
* Milton
(figuratively) To cut down or shorten (by the removal of unnecessary material).
* Francis Bacon
(obsolete) To preen; to prepare; to dress.
* Shakespeare
(archaic) To deprive; to cut off.
(transitive, archaic, rare) To debar from.
To make shorter; to shorten in duration or extent.
* The bridegroom ... abridged his visit. - Smollett
* She retired herself to Sebaste, and abridged her train from state to necessity. - Fuller
To shorten or contract by using fewer words, yet retaining the sense; to epitomize; to condense; as, to abridge a history or dictionary.
Cut short; truncate.
To curtail.
In transitive terms the difference between prune and abridge
is that prune is to remove excess material from a tree or shrub; to trim, especially to make more healthy or productive while abridge is to curtail.As a noun prune
is a plum.prune
English
(wikipedia prune)Etymology 1
From (etyl) prune, from (etyl) , a loanword from a language of Asia Minor.Noun
(en noun)Synonyms
* seeDerived terms
* German prune * prune tree * pruney * South African pruneEtymology 2
From (etyl) 'to round-off the front'.Verb
(prun)- A good grape grower will prune his vines once a year.
- Our delightful task / To prune these growing plants, and tend these flowers.
- to prune a budget, or an essay
- taking into consideration how they [laws] are to be pruned and reformed
- His royal bird / Prunes the immortal wing and cloys his beak.
- (Dryden)
- (Spenser)
Derived terms
* (l) * (l)Anagrams
* ----abridge
English
Verb
(abridg)- He had his rights abridged by the crooked sheriff.