Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To deprive (a plant or a vegetated area, for example) of leaves.
- intransitive verb To cause the leaves of (a plant or plants) to fall off, especially by the use of chemicals.
- intransitive verb To lose foliage.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To deprive of leaves; cut or pick off the leaves of.
- Deprived of leaves; having cast its leaves.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Deprived of leaves, as by their natural fall.
- transitive verb to cause (a plant) to shed its leaves.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb transitive To remove
foliage from (one or more plants), most often with a chemical agent. - adjective Deprived of leaves; defoliated.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb strip the leaves or branches from
- adjective deprived of leaves
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word defoliate.
Examples
-
Six months ago, Gary hired a goateed designer to "defoliate" the office, trucking out all the ficus trees and spanish moss to make room for curved sheets of fiberglass and, as he called it, "negative space."
Overboard 2009
-
Six months ago, Gary hired a goateed designer to "defoliate" the office, trucking out all the ficus trees and spanish moss to make room for curved sheets of fiberglass and, as he called it, "negative space."
Overboard Jennifer Tatroe 2009
-
It would seem more appropriate to pull out of Afghanistan and make it abundantly clear that the next time an attack against the US is traceable to folks who were trained or in anyway supported by folks in Afghanistan, we will obliterate Afghanistan and defoliate its opium poppies.
War Czar for Bush to Keep His Job - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com 2009
-
The teabaggers can go defoliate their scrotums, for all I care.
Think Progress » Fox ‘News’ cheerleads for Tea Party protesters. 2010
-
Metrics such as use of "body counts" and scientific solutions such as using the herbicide Agent Orange to defoliate jungles in which communist guerrillas hid became trademarks of the conflict.
-
It is naturally shrubby and over the winter the wiry framework will defoliate, but I will wait until March to shape it up with the shears.
Stunning salvias Dan Pearson 2010
-
Leonard "Marty" Kardes, 64, suffers disabling neurological problems due to exposure to Agent Orange, a chemical the U.S. military used to defoliate trees in Vietnamese jungles.
Heroes or Villains? 2010
-
We need to defoliate some of the beans to help them ripen, not in the least the borlotti, who's beans sit in almost total darkness beneath a dense lagging of leaves.
-
This means trees that defoliate have time to renew their sugar stores before future outbreaks.
-
Then 1975 sees Operation Condor, in which DEA agents, with the Mexican army, bomb, burn, and defoliate vast acreage of poppy cultivation in Sinaloa, displacing thousands of peasants and wrecking the economy.
Savages Don Winslow 2010
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.