pinebranch
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: pinebranches
Etymology: From pine + branch.
Senses: examples: text: The ruined hut was roofless, but across an angle of the walls some pinebranches had been flung, as a sort of shelter for the sheep or cattle that might repair thither in cruel weather—[…] Over them where they lay bended down the pinebranch roof, as if it would give way beneath the increasing weight; […]
ref: 1872, a former H.M. Inspector of Schools, editor, The School Board Readers. Standard V. Adapted to the Requirements of the New Code, 1871., London: Charles Griffin and Company, […], pages 116–117:
text: And now when I think of you I see you on your piano-stool finger the ineffectual bright keys and even in the pinkish parlor glow your eyes sea-grey are very wide as if they carried the reflection of mocking black pinebranches and unclimbed red-purple mountains mist-tattered under a violet-gleaming evening.
ref: 1922, John Dos Passos, A Pushcart at the Curb, New York, N.Y.: George H. Doran Company, page 158:
text: BUT come to wild Södermanland / Where forests hem you at each hand. / Come in the twilight to the coast: / The owl is stationed at his post / Upon the pinebranch every night— / To see him gives you quite a fright, / Whose eyes are fastened on the seas / And mindful of its mysteries.
ref: 1950 June, Terence Heywood, “Owl by Liljefors”, in The American-Scandinavian Review, volume XXXVIII, number 2, The American-Scandinavian Foundation, page 162:
text: Across road forestwall is darker, deeper, pine trunks stand luminous in the dark shade bespotted & specked with background browngreen masses—horizontal puff-green pinebranches, all over the frizzly corn top sea—[…]
ref: 1952–57, Jack Kerouac, Book of Sketches, 1952–57, New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books, published 2006, →ISBN, page 32:
text: Muscicapa albicollis, settled in the box No. 5. — The nest consists of moss, small pinebranches, particles of dry roots; the cup is made of pine-needles and hair.
ref: 1957, Gy. Gárdonyi, “Trials of bird-settling in the mountains of Sopron”, in Aquila, Budapest: Mezőgazdasági Kiadó, page 56:
text: To chase away the gloom, the family threw pinebranches on their fire, till the dry leaves crackled, and the flame arose, discovering once again a scene of peace and humble happiness.
ref: 1964 [1835], Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Ambitious Guest”, in Vincent F[oster] Hopper, editor, Classic American Short Stories, Great Neck, N.Y.: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., →LCCN, pages 32–33:
text: At fifty to sixty it chases the cat in, breaks the pinebranch (Bishop), rips the eucalyptus leaf loose, wakes the baby, shakes the roof & bangs the door.
ref: 1972, Tom Clark, John’s Heart, New York, N.Y.: Goliard/Santa Fe in association with Grossman Publishers, →LCCN:
text: Three enormous torches, built of tree trunks and pinebranches, stand waiting in the muddy temple grounds where goldfish-fishing contests are in progress, batteries of slot machines are overworked.
ref: 1974, Frederick Franck, Pilgrimage to Now/Here, Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, →ISBN, page 101:
text: I’m at Yaddo for a brief 2nd visit, so am looking out into a vista of snow, mighty pines, & afternoon sun on copper-pink pine trunks, little patches of pale blue sky in between the horizontals of pinebranches.
ref: 1975 December 23, Denise Levertov, “[Letter] 469”, in Robert J. Bertholf, Albert Gelpi, editors, The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, published 2004, →ISBN, page 711:
text: Under a new, heavy snow it is only pinebranches cracking, like bone: their gold sap will make resin for my sister’s violin.
ref: 1979 fall/winter, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, New York, N.Y.: Herbert Leibowitz, page 288:
text: When he woke, the world was still black and white and gray in the early dawn-light, and the robe that covered him and Brave was powdered with snow, and the pinebranches above him were loaded and sagging.
ref: 1981 [1957], H[enry] Beam Piper, “The Keeper”, in Empire, New York, N.Y.: Ace Books, page 230:
text: From lips notched in the pinebranch bled no confession, but a clot of resin.
ref: 1993, Rosanna Warren, Stained Glass, New York, N.Y.; London: W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN, page 50:
text: He sat on his front steps and listened to the wind in the pinebranches.
ref: 1997, Rafi Zabor, The Bear Comes Home, New York, N.Y.; London: W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN, page 254:
text: What I’ve learned in these ten years, he thinks, / As he lays the teeth of the saw against the apple, / Is how to kill—without haste, without hesitation. / First the chickens, hung by the feet from a pinebranch, / Pinioned in plastic milkjugs with the bottoms cut out / So they couldn’t flap as the blood drained into the bucket.
ref: 2010, Charles W. Pratt, “Homesteader in the Orchard”, in From the Box Marked Some Are Missing (The Hobblebush Granite State Poetry Series; I), Brookline, N.H.: Hobblebush Books, →ISBN, page 42:
text: “I think I hear it,” said the littlest girl. They all listened. Something: it might have been water running, but it might have been the wind in the pinebranches.
ref: 2015, Florence Delaney, “Justice”, in Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, volume 8, Bristol: Tangent Books, →ISBN, page 84:
text: Uri grasped a roughsnapped pinebranch from out of the snowjammed dumpster and mounted the steps to the porch. Yoav was just behind—“You’re thinking there’s someone inside?” and then, “If you’re thinking there’s someone, let’s wait?” Uri turned and put a finger to his lips and motioned with the pinebranch along the flanking fencelines.
ref: 2017, Joshua Cohen, Moving Kings, New York, N.Y.: Random House, →ISBN, page 198:
glosses: A branch of a pine.