Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The wild cherry of Europe, Prunus (Cerasus) avium.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) A species of cherry tree common in Europe (Prunus avium); also, the fruit, which is usually small and dark in color.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun now dialectal A wild cherry, Prunus avium, native to Europe and western Asia.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun wild or seedling sweet cherry used as stock for grafting

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French guigne.

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Examples

  • The small cherry, both black and red, common in gardens, is in Scotland, never in England, termed gean (Fr. guigne), from Guigne, in Picardy.

    Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character Ramsay, Edward B 1874

  • The double gean is one of the latest cherries and, being double, it hangs on to its flowers longer than most.

    London's fragrant front gardens 2010

  • Elm, ash, gean, the wild cherry, and the rare native large-leaved lime, Tilia platyphyllos, also grow in these woods, and stripes of alder wood follow the swampy seepage from springs and wells higher up.

    Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

  • Hoisting myself into the forest, I saw everything in crayon colours: a bright-blue British Legion hut, orange bracken, bright-red leaves of gean in the woods, the black shadows of yew.

    Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

  • Elm, ash, gean, the wild cherry, and the rare native large-leaved lime, Tilia platyphyllos, also grow in these woods, and stripes of alder wood follow the swampy seepage from springs and wells higher up.

    Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

  • Hoisting myself into the forest, I saw everything in crayon colours: a bright-blue British Legion hut, orange bracken, bright-red leaves of gean in the woods, the black shadows of yew.

    Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

  • This gean should never be introduced to wild populations, recessiv or not.

    The Shot: Fainting animals 2008

  • Rain was beating on the open leaf of plane and beech, and rapping at the black doors of the ash-bud, and the scent of the gean-tree flourish hung round the road by the river, vague, sweet, haunting, like a recollection of the magic and forgotten gardens of youth.

    Gilian The Dreamer His Fancy, His Love and Adventure Neil Munro

  • It filled the wood of Kincreggan with sounds, with the rasping and creaking of branches and the rustle of leaves, and the road by the river under the gean-trees was strewn with the broken blossom.

    Gilian The Dreamer His Fancy, His Love and Adventure Neil Munro

  • A little wood I know has in May among its oaks and beeches many white pillars of gean trees, each with its own air round it.

    The Spring of Joy: A Little Book of Healing 1917

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