Meanings
- Having the characteristics of a tree. (of a plant)
1918, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Out of Time’s Abyss in The Complete Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Hastings, UK: Delphi Classics, 2014, Chapter 1, dense forests of eucalyptus and acacia and giant arboreous ferns with feathered fronds waving gently a hundred feet above their heads
2 more examples
1684, Thomas Browne, “Observations upon Several Plants Mention’d in Scripture” in Certain Miscellany Tracts, London: Charles Mearne, pp. 28-29, 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.
[…] 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 […]
1831, Patrick Matthew, On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, Part 4, Chapter 6, p. 288Synonyms: ligneous, woody · Antonyms: herbaceous
- Covered or filled with trees.
The country was no longer plain-land, but an arboreous wilderness interspersed with small fields and fruit orchards.
1974, Richard Adams, Shardik, New York: Simon and Schuster, Book 4, Chapter 35, p. 3291 more example
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;
1670, John Evelyn, chapter 35, in Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber, 2nd edition, London, page 226Synonyms: wooded
- obsoleteGrowing on trees.
And those fruites whiche Galene calleth arboreous, are those growing vppon trees.
1575, John Banister, A Needefull, New, and Necessarie Treatise of Chyrurgerie, London: Thomas Marshe, page 881 more example
Mushromes are either terrestrial, which grow out of the earth, or arboreous, which adhere to the stocks of trees;
1657, Jean de Renou, translated by Richard Tomlinson, A Medical Dispensatory, London, Book 1, Section 2, Chapter 8, p. 258 - obsoleteanatomyHaving a tree-like, branching structure.
1698, William Cowper, The Anatomy of Humane Bodies, Oxford: S. Smith and B. Walford, Table 56, […] [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.
1 more example
The arboreous ramification of the Meditallium of the Cerebellum appearing, being cut right downwards.
1695, Humphrey Ridley, The Anatomy of the Brain Containing its Mechanism and Physiology, London: S. Smith and B. Walford, Chapter 17, figure 7Synonyms: dendritic
Synonyms & antonyms
adjectiveCovered or filled with trees.
adjectiveHaving a tree-like, branching structure.
More synonyms by meaning
adjectiveinhabiting or frequenting trees
adjectiveabounding in trees
adjectiveresembling a tree in form and branching structure
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
- Latinarbor“tree”
- Englisharboreous
From Latin arbor (“tree”).
More words from Latin
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
arboreous. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/arboreous
“arboreous.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/arboreous. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “arboreous,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/arboreous.
Source: arboreous on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.