Meaning & use
roble
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Meanings
nouncountablebiology
Any of several Latin American hardwood trees, including some oaks and trumpet trees, grown for their strong timber.
Grammar: Refers to the living tree; the plural is robles.
Patterns
- a roble tree
A huge roble shaded the village square.
Farmers left a few robles standing in the pasture for shade.
Botanists measured a roble that was centuries old.
noununcountable
The hard, durable timber of such a tree, used for furniture, floors, and construction.
Grammar: Uncountable when it means the wood: a table made of roble.
Patterns
- made of roble
The carpenter built the doors from roble.
A roble floor can last for generations.
Roble was once exported in large quantities for barrel making.
Word forms
| plural | robles |
|---|
Common combinations
- roble wood
- The cabinet was made from polished roble wood.
- roble flooring
- They chose roble flooring for the living room.
- roble furniture
- Roble furniture holds up well in humid climates.
- roble forest
- A rare roble forest covers the mountain.
Synonyms and how they differ
- oak
- Oak is the ordinary English name for the Quercus genus, while roble is the Spanish-derived name used in Latin American trade.
- hardwood
- Hardwood is a general category of dense timber, and roble is one specific kind.
Opposites
Word family
- robles noun
- plural of roble
- roble blanco noun
- white roble, a name for a tree such as Tabebuia
Commonly confused: roble or robin? roble or rubble?
roble vs robin
A robin is a bird, not a tree; the two words only look somewhat alike.
roble vs rubble
Rubble is broken stone and brick from a wrecked building, which has no connection to this wood.
Practice
What is roble?
Choose one answer.
Roble is a Latin American hardwood tree or its wood. The other options are unrelated things.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “roble”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.