Yewtree
verb, adjective
Yewtree is a verb meaning “To investigate historic sexual offences as part of Operation Yewtree, or otherwise reveal or allege someone (especially a celebrity active in the…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled Y-E-W-T-R-E-E, and it appears about once in every 25 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does Yewtree mean?
verb
- 1
UKslangTo investigate historic sexual offences as part of Operation Yewtree, or otherwise reveal or allege someone (especially a celebrity active in the 1970s and 1980s) to be a paedophile or abuser.
adjective
- 1
UKslangA paedophile, specifically one revealed by Operation Yewtree or a similar investigation.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of Yewtree
- Yewtrees present, singular, he/she/it
- Yewtreeing participle, present
- Yewtreed participle, past
- more Yewtree comparative
- most Yewtree superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is Yewtree?
Yewtree appears about once in every 25 million words in written English, the 152,206th 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).
Where does Yewtree come from?
From Operation Yewtree, an investigation by British police forces into historic sex offences primarily linked to Jimmy Saville. The name Yewtree (from yew tree) was randomly selected from a list of neutral terms.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).