Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A wood or forest with green foliage.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A wood or forest when green, as in summer.
  • noun Wood which has acquired a green tint under the pathological influence of the fungus Peziza.
  • noun Same as green-broom.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A forest as it appears in spring and summer.
  • adjective Pertaining to a greenwood.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A forest in full leaf, as in summer.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun woodlands in full leaf

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From green +‎ wood.

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Examples

  • It is an image of liberation, but inevitably it reads as a reminder of constraint: The greenwood is a fiction, a dream out of Shakespeare's plays, not a place where actual human lives can be led.

    The (Private) Lives of the Poets Adam Kirsch 2011

  • Merry in the greenwood is the note of horn and hound,

    Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children W. Houghton

  • Fairer far than all the greenwood is my sweetheart's face to cheer me,

    Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century Edmund O. Jones

  • I tried to get Ben, you know, the gardener's boy -- to come an 'live in the' greenwood 'with me a bit an' help to make 'tyrants' tremble, but he said he was 'fraid his mother might find him some day, an' he wouldn't, so I'm going to make them tremble all by myself, unless you will come an 'be Little John, like you were once before -- oh, do! "

    My Lady Caprice Jeffery Farnol 1915

  • Yes | No | Report from hawg daddy wrote 34 weeks 1 day ago we do it a lot on lake greenwood in sc and we enjoy it. we only do it under boat ramps.

    Noodlin', Grabblin', Hand Fishing.... 2009

  • Yes | No | Report from hawg daddy wrote 34 weeks 1 day ago we do it a lot on lake greenwood in sc and we enjoy it. we only do it under boat ramps.

    Noodlin', Grabblin', Hand Fishing.... 2009

  • The old idea was to wear colors and live in tents that blended and harmonized with the greenwood.

    Madame de Luzy | Miette's Bedtime Story Podcast 2009

  • All submitted comments are subject to the rules set forth in our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. from hawg daddy wrote 44 weeks 3 days ago im in south carolina and the crappie here on lake greenwood are still in the deep water but some of my buddies have been catching some in shallow waters.

    Spawning Crappies! 2009

  • At the end of E.M. Forster's pioneering gay novel, "Maurice" 1913, the author leaves Maurice and his lover, Alec, planning a flight into "the greenwood"—an imaginary realm of freedom where they can live and love openly.

    The (Private) Lives of the Poets Adam Kirsch 2011

  • In the first pages of Alan Hollinghurst's wonderfully pleasing novel "The Stranger's Child," we are back in Forster's England, shortly before World War I, following a pair of lovers literally through the greenwood.

    The (Private) Lives of the Poets Adam Kirsch 2011

Comments

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  • Under the greenwood tree,

    Who loves to lie with me,

    And tune his merry note

    Unto the sweet bird's throat,

    Come hither, come hither, come hither:

    Here shall he see

    No enemy

    But winter and rough weather.

    January 9, 2008

  • 'Tis merry in greenwood - thus runs the old lay, -

    In the gladsome month of lively May,

    When the wild birds' song on stem and spray

    Invites to forest bower;

    The rears the ash his airy crest,

    Then shines the birch in silver vest,

    And the beech in glistening leaves is drest,

    And dark between shows the oak's proud breast,

    Life a chieftain's frowning tower;

    - Walter Scott, 'Tis Merry In Greenwood'.

    November 3, 2008