arboreal

comparative more arboreal · superlative most arboreal

1. Of, relating to, or resembling a tree.

   The sleek Brazilian jaguar Does not in its arboreal gloom Distil so rank a feline smell As Grishkin in a drawing-room.

   1919, T. S. Eliot, “Whispers of Immortality”, in Selected Poems, Penguin, published 1948

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

   1650, Jan Baptist van Helmont, “Of the Magnetick Cure of Wounds”, in Walter Charleton, transl., A Ternary of Paradoxes, London: William Lee, page 72

   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.

   1922, James Joyce, Ulysses, London: The Egoist Press, page 282

   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 […]

   1979, William Styron, chapter 2, in Sophie’s Choice, New York: Random House, page 37

   No trees have grown on the windswept Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean for tens of thousands of years — just shrubs and other low-lying vegetation. That’s why a recent arboreal discovery nearly 20 feet (6 meters) beneath the ground caught researchers’ attention.

   2024 September 27, Katie Hunt, “Scientists discover hidden ancient forest on treeless island”, in CNN, archived from the original on 17 Nov 2024

2. Living in or among trees.

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

   1911, Ambrose Bierce, “monkey”, in The Devil’s Dictionary, New York, N.Y.; Washington, D.C.: The Neale Publishing Company, →OCLC

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   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.

   1872, Charles Darwin, chapter 7, in The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 6th edition, London: Odhams Press, page 233

   […] 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.

   2002, Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Book 3, p. 239

   Typically, tarantulas are either terrestrial or arboreal, but the Chilobrachys natanicharum can live in both enivronments^([sic – meaning environments]), the researchers said, demonstrating its adaptability.

   2023 September 26, Hafsa Khalil, “Electric blue tarantula species discovered in Thailand”, in CNN, archived from the original on 06 Oct 2023

3. Covered or filled with trees.

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

   1945, Elizabeth Bowen, “The Demon Lover”, in The Demon Lover and Other Stories,, London: Jonathan Cape, page 96

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

   1885, Richard Jefferies, “Forest”, in The Open Air,, London: Chatto and Windus, page 188

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

   1995, Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, New York: Knopf, Part 3, Chapter 7, p. 426

   Synonyms: arboreous

plural arboreals

1. Any tree-dwelling creature.

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

   1971, Theo Lang, The difference between a man and a woman