MEANING
1. Soft, spongy tissue inside a plant stem or beneath the outer skin of a citrus fruit.
2. The essential substance or central point of an idea, statement, or experience.
3. To remove the soft central tissue from a plant stem or similar plant material.
Use it for
describing the pale inner tissue beneath a citrus rind; distinguishing a plant’s soft centre from its bark; giving a cut stem a precise textureNames the soft inner plant tissue and the essential substance of an account, distinct from an outer rind or an empty husk. Writing functions: Texture / Essential Meaning.
Words that belong together
- white pith
- the pith of a stem
- orange pith
On the page
The split stem exposed a dry cylinder of pith.
White pith clung to the orange after she removed the last strip of rind.
The pith of her objection was lost beneath the elaborate courtesy.
He preserved the pith of the story while changing almost every incident.
The craft account describes how the stalks were pithed before they were joined.
Word forms
- Base
- pith
- Past tense
- pithed
- Past participle
- pithed
- Present participle
- pithing
Usage notes
Usually uncountable noun. Verb pith is established for removing plant pith: piths, pithed, pithed, pithing; future will pith. Register: neutral. Commonness: uncommon in conversation; established in descriptive and formal prose (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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