snoeien

Meaning

to prune

Concepts

shear

prune

clip

cut

pare

trim

lop

prune down

Hyphenated as

snoei‧en

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈsnu.i̯ə(n)/

Etymology

From Middle Dutch snoeyen. Further etymology is unknown, although several theories exist:
* One theory suggests a common source with Old High German nōen (“to carve, to shave off”), but a lack of other cognates makes this unlikely;
* In older texts, and dialectally, the word is synonymous with snoepen (“to snack, to eat something tasty”), which originally referred to picking fruits or other crops;
* A link has been suggested to a group of words starting with sn-, which all refer to a "pointed protruding head or beak", such as snavel (“beak”) and snuit (“snout”);
* Perhaps a merging of snijden (“to cut”) and groeien (“to grow”).