Other forms: pines, pining
A pine is an evergreen tree with needles instead of leaves and cones instead of fruit. A pine forest, the smell of pine, pine needles underfoot.
Pine is also the pale softwood from those trees, which is what cheap furniture and floorboards are made of — a pine table, stripped pine. Note that pine, fir and spruce are three different trees that English speakers routinely confuse, and that a Christmas tree is usually a spruce or a fir rather than a pine. The verb is unrelated: to pine for something is to long for it painfully, and pine away means to weaken from grief.
1nounpineAn evergreen tree with needles and cones.
“The whole hillside is pine and nothing else.”
2nounpaleThe pale softwood from that tree.
“The table is pine and shows every mark.”
3verblongTo long painfully for somebody or something.
“The dog pined for a fortnight after he left.”
pine is a tree, or a longing.
Also accepted in games: fir
Latin pinus gave the tree its name across Europe. The verb pine is a different word entirely, from Old English pinian, to torment — the same root as pain. Longing and torture are the same word, which is a fair account of what pining feels like.
Middle English
pyne
English, today
pine
From Middle English pyne. From Middle English pyne, from Old English pīne, from Proto-West Germanic pīnā, from Latin pīnus, see there for more. a doublet of pinus. Possibly related to fat.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA