How to Use bough in a Sentence

bough

noun
  • This may sound silly, but many spruce trees have boughs to the ground.
    — Jeff Lowenfels, Alaska Dispatch News, 22 Sep. 2017
  • Instead look through the trees that are open, in terms of both their boughs and their flaws.
    — Popular Mechanics Editors, Popular Mechanics, 17 June 2016
  • Stars drop to the Earth like fruit falling from the boughs of a tree.
    — Ross Andersen, The Atlantic, 10 Aug. 2017
  • Non-surfers could find shade or solitude under the trees’ boughs.
    — Hillary Davis, Daily Pilot, 8 June 2017
  • Deck the halls with boughs of holly, Fa la la la la, la la la la.
    — Sarah Kuta, The Know, 29 Nov. 2019
  • Dollops of snow balance on the tops scraggly oaks and boughs of pitch pine.
    — Peter Marteka, courant.com, 6 Dec. 2019
  • This season, deck the halls with boughs of holly—and bouts of laughter!
    — Jennifer Aldrich, Country Living, 27 Aug. 2019
  • In fall, line the stairs with pumpkins; in winter, swap them for pine boughs and holly.
    — Angie Hicks, Boston Herald, 25 Sep. 2025
  • In one photo, the fireplace mantle is lit up with twinkly lights and a thick swath of pine boughs.
    — Natalia Senanayake, Peoplemag, 20 Nov. 2023
  • Trim an evergreen and dress the boughs down the center of the table.
    — Debbie Arrington, sacbee, 10 Oct. 2017
  • Gleaming in the boughs were pearlescent apples.
    — Bailey Richards, PEOPLE, 11 Dec. 2025
  • Then toss on a massive pile of live evergreen boughs and needles.
    — Tim MacWelch, Popular Science, 26 Dec. 2019
  • This shelter is a great addition to a tarp hammock or strung up over a springy bough bed.
    — Popular Science, 28 May 2020
  • Events and art exhibits often have been held under its boughs, the agency says.
    — Alisha Ebrahimji, CNN, 11 Aug. 2023
  • Orangutans have been known to repel insects by waving a bough.
    — National Geographic, 12 Jan. 2023
  • That’s a thin bough on which to hang a lot of better-than-necessary tinsel.
    — Jackson McHenry, Vulture, 17 Nov. 2024
  • Fill the boughs with small apples, kumquats, and vintage-style ornaments.
    — Sarah Martens, Better Homes & Gardens, 1 Oct. 2022
  • The sight of boughs of holly and string lights can warm you even in the coldest temperatures.
    — Katrina Brown Hunt, Travel + Leisure, 22 Sep. 2023
  • The nightingale sang just before midnight, as if it were perched in the boughs of the dripping tree in the car park.
    — Deborah Levy, The Cut, 1 July 2018
  • All the snow resting on their upper boughs began to melt in big wet drops, soaking the dry earth below.
    — Hazlitt, 19 Nov. 2025
  • The leafy bough was followed a millisecond later by a squirrel.
    — John Kelly, Washington Post, 30 May 2022
  • The white pines are huge with much of their boughs high up leaving a skeleton of a trunk and branches underneath.
    — Peter Marteka, courant.com, 10 Sep. 2017
  • Be sure to spend some time under the boughs of the huge pines and explore every nook and cranny of the small island.
    — Peter Marteka, courant.com, 9 Oct. 2019
  • Stop by and ask for an armful of boughs to take home, then use a heavy-duty floral wire to fix them together.
    — Mary Catherine McAnnally Scott, Southern Living, 8 Sep. 2023
  • Scotch pine gets knotty, so may have some curve to the stem, and the boughs of white pine aren’t quite as stiff as some of their counterparts.
    — Laura Daily, Washington Post, 19 Nov. 2019
  • With black, soulful eyes that matched his coat, the creature had green boughs adorned with ornaments wrapped around his long, stiff neck.
    — Silvia Foster-Frau, ExpressNews.com, 24 Dec. 2019
  • Troops decorated the mess halls with flags and evergreen boughs.
    — Michael M. Phillips, WSJ, 9 Nov. 2018
  • Gliding by the windows are ice-laden evergreen boughs and frosted peaks worthy of a snow globe.
    — Jessica Puckett, Condé Nast Traveler, 12 Nov. 2024
  • Boughs from the top of that branch landed precariously on top of a neighbor’s younger tree.
    — Dana Guzzetti, The Mercury News, 2 May 2017
  • The evergreen boughs will catch snowfall and insulate the patch of dirt from winter chills.
    — Elizabeth Wolfe and Saeed Ahmed, CNN, 26 Dec. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'bough.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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