''spruce'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''spruce'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260313192153-00-⌔

spruce - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

spruce (countable and uncountable, plural spruces or spruce)

• Any of various large coniferous evergreen trees or shrubs from the genus Picea, found in northern temperate and boreal regions; originally and more fully spruce fir.
• (uncountable) The wood of a spruce.
• (used attributively) Made of the wood of the spruce.
  • ✤ That spruce table is beautiful!
• (obsolete) Prussian leather; pruce.

Adjective

spruce (comparative sprucer, superlative sprucest)

• (comparable) Smart, trim, and elegant in appearance; fastidious (said of a person).
  • ✤ Hovv often vvould the Svvaines prepare their Morrice & their May/To haue a ſight of her, vvhen all enamoured vvent their vvay?/The ſprevvſeſt Citie-Lads for her vvould faine the Countrie-aire,/And that their prouder Girles had but adultrate beauties ſvvaire, […]¹
  • ✤ [A] baker’s boy in a white apron and blue jumpers went by carrying a basket of bread on his head; and from the nearby tobacconist’s, a spruce young lieutenant dressed in a black uniform emerged lighting a cigarette.²
  • ✤ He had great neatness of person, and he continued to wear his spruce black coat and his bowler hat, always a little too small for him, in a dapper, jaunty manner.³
  • ✤ A spruce young lieutenant came over, saluted and clambered into the back of our jeep, and we were off.⁴
  • ✤ The two clean rooms, where chips are made, are sprucer than a hospital theatre.⁵

Verb

spruce (third-person singular simple present spruces, present participle sprucing, simple past and past participle spruced)

• (usually with up) To arrange neatly; tidy up.
  • ✤ Synonyms: prettify, neaten, titivate
• (ambitransitive, usually with up) To make oneself spruce (neat and elegant in appearance).
• To tease.

Etymology

From Middle English Spruce, an alteration of Pruce (“Prussia”), from Medieval Latin, from a Baltic language, probably Old Prussian; for more, see Prussia. Spruce, spruse (1412), and Sprws (1378) were terms for commodities brought to England by Hanseatic merchants (beer, wood, leather). The tree with this name was also believed to have been native to Prussia. The adjective and verb senses (“trim, neat” and “to make trim, neat”) are attested from 1594, and originate with spruce leather (1466), which was used to make a popular style of jerkins in the 1400s that was considered smart-looking.

Pronunciation

• enPR: spro͞os, (US) IPA: /spɹuːs/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
• (Scotland, Northern Ireland) IPA: /spɹʉs/
• Rhymes: -uːs

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

1. 1606, William Warner, “The Sixteenth Booke. Chapter CI.”, in A Continuance of Albions England: […], London: […] Felix Kyngston [and Richard Bradock?] for George Potter, […], →OCLC, page 399: ↩

2. 1916, Henry Beston, A Volunteer Poilu: ↩

3. 1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter XXXI, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC: ↩

4. 1952, Norman Lewis, Golden Earth: ↩

5. 2012 October 13, “Plessey returns: Chips with everything”, in The Economist ‎${}^{[1]}$, London: The Economist Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 13 October 2012: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

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