olive-branch

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English[edit]

Verb[edit]

olive-branch (third-person singular simple present olive-branches, present participle olive-branching, simple past and past participle olive-branched)

  1. To extend an olive branch; to make a peace offering; to attempt to restore peaceful relations.
    • 1914, Thomas Allibone Janvier, At the Casa Napoleon, page 140:
      As she looked at this bunch of too-full-blown roses, and realized the message that it was intended delicately to convey, the dove-like and olive-branching sentiments departed from her breast—and in their place came sentiments compounded of daggers and bow-strings and very poisonous bowls!
    • 1989, Albert Norman, The Falkland Islands, Their Kinship Isles, the Antarctic Hemisphere, & the Freedom of the 2 Great Oceans, page 218:
      That was intricate reporting plus reasoning plus olive-branching and remonstrating.
    • 2007, William Jelani Cobb, The Devil and Dave Chappelle: And Other Essays, page 15:
      The frantic olive-branching of America while consistently berating black men has worn me down.
    • 2016, Jeff Scot Philips, Big Fat Food Fraud: Confessions of a Health-Food Hustler:
      “Let me help you out,” I olive-branched him, “I do know what you pulled me for; I crossed the double yellow line.