Piny

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Covered with or abounding in pine trees, as in a forest or landscape dominated by evergreen conifers
2. Describing a place thick with pines, or something that smells strongly of pine resin and needles
3. Full of pine trees or resembling them, often used of woodland or air scented by their sap

Etymology: Piny is a plain case of a noun turned into an adjective by adding a suffix. The base word is "pine", the evergreen conifer, which came into Old English as "pīne" from Latin "pīnus", the name of the same tree. The ending "-y" descends from an Old English suffix "-ig", meaning "having the quality of" or "full of", so a piny place is one full of pines and a piny smell is one that resembles pine. The suffix has the same root as words like "stony" and "milky", and it is the ordinary way English turns a substance or plant into a describing word.

Synonyms: piney, resinous

Antonyms: barren, bare