vine

A vine is a plant with long, flexible stems that climbs or spreads along the ground. Think of grapes reaching for the sun or ivy creeping up a stone wall. It often needs something to grow on, using tendrils or twisting stems to hold onto trees, fences, or other supports. Some grow wild, while others are carefully raised in gardens and vineyards. You might see one covered with flowers or hanging with fruit.

The word usually refers to the plant itself, especially one that climbs, trails, or spreads.

A vine is a plant with long, flexible stems that usually climbs, twists, or trails instead of standing upright on its own. Unlike a tree or a thick shrub, it often depends on support from a wall, fence, trellis, branch, or the ground as it grows toward the light. You can picture a grapevine in a vineyard, ivy on an old wall, or morning glories winding around a garden frame.

Vines appear in many forms. Some are woody, like grape and wisteria, and some are softer plants, like cucumber or pumpkin. They may climb by curling tendrils around a support, by twining their stems, or simply by spreading across the ground. In everyday English, the word can refer both to the whole plant and to one of its long climbing or trailing stems.

The word is strongly linked with grape-growing and wine because of its history, but its meaning is much broader than that. It can describe many kinds of climbing or trailing plants in gardens, forests, and farms. It is only occasionally used in a figurative way for something long, thin, and winding, but that is much less common than the plant meaning. Most of the time, when people say "vine," they mean a climbing or trailing plant.