arborize

English

Etymology

From Latin arbor (“tree”) +‎ -ize.

Verb

arborize (third-person singular simple present arborizes, present participle arborizing, simple past and past participle arborized)

1. Alternative spelling of arborise
   • 1964, Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation‎^[1], New York: Macmillan, Book 2, Chapter 2, p. 433:

     A hierarchy […] is not like a row of organ pipes; it is like a tree, arborizing downward.

   • 1967, Christine Brooke-Rose, “The Foot”, in Susan Williams, Richard Glyn Jones, editors, The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women‎^[2], London: Penguin, published 1996, page 187:

     The imitation neurones I am composed of agitate their dendrites like mad ganglia that arborize the system as the cell bodies dance along the axis cylinder within the fibres of the foot that isn’t there […]

   • 1991, Donald G. McQuarrie, “Techniques of Resection and Reconstruction for Tongue and Mouth Cancer”, in John S. Najarian, John P. Delaney, editors, Progress in Cancer Surgery‎^[3], St. Louis: Mosby, page 254:

     The vessels penetrate the clavipectoral fascia […] . They then arborize the underside of the pectoralis major.

   • 2008, Jen Weaverling, editor, Creative Flower Gardening‎^[4], Minnetonka, MN: National Home Gardening Club, page 128:

     Tall, wide shrubs take up a huge amount of space in a small garden, so remove the lower limbs to provide more space underneath. […] When you “arborize” the shrub by limbing it up, you’ll discover an elegant, multi-trunked structure […]

   • 2018, Richard Powers, The Overstory‎^[5], New York: Norton:

     His seven-year-old brain fires and rewires, building arborized axons, dendrites, those tiny spreading trees.

Derived terms

• arborization

 

Portuguese

Verb

arborize

1. inflection of arborizar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative