Word.ws English Dictionary

treechange

Syllables: tree·changeUK/ˈtɹiːˌt͡ʃeɪnd͡ʒ/

treechange noun: a movement of people from cities to the countryside.

Noun

treechange (countable and uncountable, plural treechanges)

  1. (Australia, uncountable) A movement of people from cities to the countryside.
    • Treechange refers to the trend for baby boomers to seek out lifestyle property in country towns usually within a two–three hour drive of a capital city. The drivers of treechange and seachange are the same: people wanting a simpler life in a pleasant town with all the amenities not too far from...2006, Bernard Salt, “Values and Mores”, in The Big Picture: Life, Work and Relationships in the 21st Century, Prahran, Vic.: Hardie Grant Books, published 2007, →ISBN, part 1 (Life), page 23
    • For example, the ‘seachange’ and ‘treechange’ movements have seen transitions in rural and regional communities, with the influx of wealthy city-dwellers increasing the price of housing and demanding the provision of particular services and facilities[…].2007, Susan Thompson, “Planning for Diverse Communities”, in Susan Thompson, editor, Planning Australia: An Overview of Urban and Regional Planning, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University...
  2. (Australia, countable) An act of relocating from an urban to a rural community.

Examples of treechange in a sentence

  • Treechange refers to the trend for baby boomers to seek out lifestyle property in country towns usually within a two–three hour drive of a capital city.2006, Bernard Salt, “Values and Mores”, in The Big Picture: Life, Work and Relationships in the 21st Century, Prahran, Vic.: Hardie Grant...
  • She told me about a time she and a photographer were sent out to do ‘another treechange story’ – a feel-good piece, she explained, about mainlanders moving to Tasmania.2010, Anna Krien, Into the Woods, page 138:

Forms of treechange

pluraltreechanges

Origin of treechange

From tree + change, modelled after seachange. According to the Australian author and demographer Bernard Salt, the word was coined by “a subeditor” in 2003 and thereafter adopted by him.

Words formed from treechange

Words that rhyme with treechange

Questions about treechange

What does treechange mean?
Treechange means a movement of people from cities to the countryside.
How do you use treechange in a sentence?
Treechange refers to the trend for baby boomers to seek out lifestyle property in country towns usually within a two–three hour drive of a capital city.
What part of speech is treechange?
Treechange is a noun.
How do you pronounce treechange?
Treechange is pronounced /ˈtɹiːˌt͡ʃeɪnd͡ʒ/ (UK).
What is the plural of treechange?
The plural of treechange is treechanges.

Words near treechange in the dictionary

  1. treebeard
  2. treebound
  3. Treeby
  4. Treece
  5. Treeces
  6. treechange
  7. treechanger
  8. treechangers
  9. treechanges
  10. treeconomics
  11. treecotton

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: treechange (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-treechange.ogg.

Cite this entry: “treechange.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/treechange. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.