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PlainSpell

tree

/tɹiː/noun, verb, number

tree is spelled T-R-E-E: 4 letters and one syllable. It appears 71 times per million words in written English, the 1,486th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). People search “three vs tree” about 70 times a month (Google, United States). As a noun, tree means “A perennial woody plant taller and larger than a shrub with a wooden trunk and, at some distance from the ground, having leaves and branches” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of tree is trees; Wiktionary also lists treen (obsolete).

How many letters and syllables are in tree?

Letters4: T-R-E-E
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing71 times per million words; the 1,486th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Pairs people search
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How common is tree?

Tree appears 71 times per million words in written English, the 1,486th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce tree?

  • /tɹiː/
  • [t̠ʰɹʷiː]
  • [t͡ʃʰɹʷiː]

Tree has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Back_ache-tree.wav, En-uk-tree.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Naomi_Persephone_Amethyst_(NaomiAmethyst)-tree.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with tree

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

three vs tree70 G
tree vs trie0 B

Also written: tre.

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

What rhymes with tree?

No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as tree.

Spelled with the same letters in another order: reet, rete, teer.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of tree

  • trees plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • treeing participle, present
  • treed participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does tree mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    A perennial woody plant taller and larger than a shrub with a wooden trunk and, at some distance from the ground, having leaves and branches.

    Hyperion is the tallest living tree in the world.

  2. 2

    Any other plant (such as a large shrub or herb) that is reminiscent of the above in form and size.

    The banana tree is a tall perennial herb: its trunk is not woody.

  3. 3

    An object made from a tree trunk and having multiple hooks or storage platforms.

    He had the choice of buying a scratching post or a cat tree.

  4. 4

    A device used to hold or stretch a shoe open.

    He put a shoe tree in each of his shoes.

  5. 5

    The structural frame of a saddle.

  6. 6

    A connected graph with no cycles or, if the graph is finite, equivalently a connected graph with n vertices and n−1 edges.

  7. 7

    A recursive data structure in which each node has zero or more nodes as children, but does not share children with other nodes.

  8. 8

    A display or listing of entries or elements such that there are primary and secondary entries shown, usually linked by drawn lines or by indenting to the right.

    We’ll show it as a tree list.

verb

  1. 1

    To chase (an animal or person) up a tree.

    The dog treed the cat.

  2. 2

    To place in a tree.

    Black bears can tree their cubs for protection, but grizzly bears cannot.

  3. 3

    To place upon a shoe tree; to fit with a shoe tree; to stretch upon a shoe tree.

    to tree a boot

  4. 4

    To take refuge in a tree.

noun

as TREE
  1. 1

    An extremely fast-growing function based on Kruskal's tree theorem.

noun

as Tree
  1. 1

    Alternative letter-case form of TREE.

number

  1. 1

    colloquialPronunciation spelling of three

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Tree in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frencharbre (large woody plant), arçon (frame of a saddle)
GermanBaum, böim, baum, bem, Bam, Baam (large woody plant)
Portugueseárvore (large woody plant)
Spanishárbol (large woody plant), fuste (the structure or wooden frame used in the…), enarbolar (to chase up a tree)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does tree come from?

From Middle English trau, tre, tree, treo, treou, trew, trewe, troe, trouȝh, trouȝgh, trow, trowe, from Old English trēo, trēow, trēu, trīo, trīow, trȳw (“tree; wood; forest; beam, cudgel, log; cross”), from Proto-West Germanic *treu, from Proto-Germanic *trewą (“tree”), from pre-Germanic *dréwom, thematic e-grade derivative of Proto-Indo-European *dóru (“tree”). Related to tar, true.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after tree