different between arboreous vs arboreal

English

Etymology

From Latin arbor (“tree”).

Adjective

arboreous

1. (of a plant) Having the characteristics of a tree.

   Synonyms: ligneous, woody

   Antonym: herbaceous

   • 1684, Thomas Browne, “Observations upon Several Plants Mention’d in Scripture” in Certain Miscellany Tracts, London: Charles Mearne, pp. 28-29,^[3]

     For the Parable may not […] imply any or every grain of Mustard, but point at such a grain as from its fertile spirit, and other concurrent advantages, hath the success to become arboreous, shoot into such a magnitude, and acquire the like tallness.

   • 1831, Patrick Matthew, On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, Part 4, Chapter 6, p. 288,^[4]

     […] the continental climate, that is, having a colder winter and warmer summer, capable of producing considerable vigour of arboreous vegetation, and not so favourable to the generating of […] peat-moss […]

   • 1918, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Out of Time’s Abyss in The Complete Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Hastings, UK: Delphi Classics, 2014, Chapter 1,^[5]

     dense forests of eucalyptus and acacia and giant arboreous ferns with feathered fronds waving gently a hundred feet above their heads

2. Covered or filled with trees.

   Synonym: wooded

   • 1670, John Evelyn, Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber London, 2nd edition, Chapter 35, p. 226,^[6]

     But among Authours, we meet with nothing more frequent, and indeed more celebrated, than those Arboreous amenities and Plantations of Woods, which they call’d Luci;

   • 1974, Richard Adams, Shardik, New York: Simon and Schuster, Book 4, Chapter 35, p. 329,^[7]

     The country was no longer plain-land, but an arboreous wilderness interspersed with small fields and fruit orchards.

3. (obsolete) Growing on trees.
   • 1575, John Banister, A Needefull, New, and Necessarie Treatise of Chyrurgerie, London: Thomas Marshe, p. 88,^[8]

     And those fruites whiche Galene calleth arboreous, are those growing vppon trees.

   • 1657, Richard Tomlinson (translator), A Medical Dispensatory by Jean de Renou, London, Book 1, Section 2, Chapter 8, p. 258,^[9]

     Mushromes are either terrestrial, which grow out of the earth, or arboreous, which adhere to the stocks of trees;

4. (obsolete, anatomy) Having a tree-like, branching structure.

   Synonym: dendritic

   • 1695, Humphrey Ridley, The Anatomy of the Brain Containing its Mechanism and Physiology, London: S. Smith and B. Walford, Chapter 17, figure 7,^[10]

     The arboreous ramification of the Meditallium of the Cerebellum appearing, being cut right downwards.

   • 1698, William Cowper, The Anatomy of Humane Bodies, Oxford: S. Smith and B. Walford, Table 56,^[11]

     […] [the] Internal Concave Surface [of the Placenta Uterina] next the Amnios, Appears Cover’d with the Chorion; under which the Arboreous Disposition of its Blood-Vessels are elegantly Exprest.

See also

• arboreal
• arborous

Translations

References

English

Etymology

From Latin arboreus (“tree-like”) +? -al, mid-17th century.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /???b??i.?l/
• Rhymes: -?????l

Adjective

arboreal

1. Of, relating to, or resembling a tree.
   • 1650, Walter Charleton (translator), “Of the Magnetick Cure of Wounds” in A Ternary of Paradoxes, by Jan Baptist van Helmont, London: William Lee, p. 72,^[1]

     High and sacred, in good troth, is the power of the microcosmical spirit, which without any arboreal trunck produceth a true Cherry:

   • 1919, T. S. Eliot, “Whispers of Immortality” in Selected Poems, Penguin, 1948,^[2]

     The sleek Brazilian jaguar

     Does not in its arboreal gloom

     Distil so rank a feline smell

     As Grishkin in a drawing-room.

   • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses, London: The Egoist Press, p. 282,^[3]

     In the mild breezes of the west and of the east lofty trees wave in different directions their first class foliage, the wafty sycamore, the Lebanonian cedar, the exalted planetree, the eugenic eucalyptus and other ornaments of the arboreal world with which that region is thoroughly well supplied.

   • 1979, William Styron, Sophie’s Choice, New York: Random House, Chapter 2, p. 37,^[4]

     Only short blocks away traffic flowed turbulently on Flatbush Avenue […] but here the arboreal green and the pollen-hazy light, the infrequent trucks and cars, the casual pace of the few strollers at the park’s border all created the effect of an outlying area in a modest Southern city […]

2. Living in or among trees.
   • 1872, Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, London: Odhams Press, 6th edition, Chapter 7, p. 233,^[5]

     If the harvest mouse had been more strictly arboreal, it would perhaps have had its tail rendered structurally prehensile, as is the case with some members of the same order.

   • 1911, Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, p. 222,^[6]

     MONKEY, n. An arboreal animal which makes itself at home in genealogical trees.

   • 2002, Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Book 3, p. 239,^[7]

     […] faced with this emergency, Tessie took Chapter Eleven and me up to the attic. Maybe it was a vestige of our arboreal past; we wanted to climb up and out of danger.

3. Covered or filled with trees.

   Synonym: arboreous

   • 1885, Richard Jefferies, “Forest” in The Open Air, London: Chatto and Windus, p. 188,^[8]

     The breadth of the arboreal landscape requires a longer list of living creatures, and creatures of greater bulk.

   • 1945, Elizabeth Bowen, “The Demon Lover” in The Demon Lover and Other Stories, London: Jonathan Cape, p. 96,^[9]

     She married him, and the two of them settled down in this quiet, arboreal part of Kensington:

   • 1995, Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, New York: Knopf, Part 3, Chapter 7, p. 426,^[10]

     mountains, unlike the arboreal garden and the sacred stream, had gone unmentioned in the account of Creation given in Genesis

Related terms

• arbor
• arborescent
• arboreous
• arborous

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• boreal
• dendritic
• sylvan

Noun

arboreal (plural arboreals)

1. Any tree-dwelling creature.
   • 1971, Theo Lang, The difference between a man and a woman

     So, by learning to use their eyes to more and more advantage the arboreals added another treasure to the foundation of human intelligence.