Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A deciduous tree of the genus Fagus having smooth gray bark, alternate simple leaves, and three-angled nuts enclosed in prickly burs. The best-known species are F. grandifolia of eastern North America and the European species F. sylvatica and its numerous cultivated forms.
- n. The wood of any of these trees, used for flooring, containers, plywood, and tool handles.
- n. Any of several other woody plants, as in the genera Carpinus and Nothofagus.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A tree of the genus Fagus, natural order Cupuliferœ. The common or European beech, F. sylvatica, grows to a large size, with branches forming a beautiful head with thick foliage. The bark is smooth and of a silvery cast. The nuts or mast are eaten by swine, poultry, oxen, and other animals, and yield a good oil for lamps. The timber is not much used in building, as it soon rots in damp places, but it is used for piles in places where it is constantly wet. It is manufactured into a great variety of tools, for which it is fitted on account of its great hardness, toughness, and close, uniform texture, and is also used to some extent in making furniture, taking a beautiful polish and varying much in color. Several ornamental varieties are frequently seen, as the red beech and copper beech with colored leaves, and the fern-leafed beech with divided leaves. The American beech, F. ferruginea, is a very similar tree, sometimes 100 feet in height and 3 or 4 feet in diameter.
- n. Obsolete spelling of beach.
- n. Any one of several trees of different genera having a real or fancied resemblance to the true beeches; especially, Cryptocarya glaucescens, of the laurel family. Also called she-beech and black beech.
Wiktionary
- n. A tree of the genus Fagus having a smooth, light grey trunk, oval, pointed leaves and many branches.
- n. The wood of the beech tree.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Bot.) A tree of the genus Fagus.
WordNet 3.0
- n. any of several large deciduous trees with rounded spreading crowns and smooth grey bark and small sweet edible triangular nuts enclosed in burs; north temperate regions
- n. wood of any of various beech trees; used for flooring and containers and plywood and tool handles
Etymologies
- From Middle English beche, from Old English bēċe, from Proto-Germanic *bōkijōn (compare Dutch beuk, German Buche, Danish bøg), from Proto-Germanic *bōks 'beech; book'. More at book. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English beche, from Old English bēce. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The PLUS mills are made in beech wood and come in 3 versions; a white salt, a black peppermill and a multicoloured version that has both the salt and pepper option.”
“The nearest Japanese site is Shirakami-Sanchi in the far north of Honshu which preserves the last virgin Japanese beech forest and the vulnerable Japanese black bear but is not at all comparable in richness of species except for insects.”
“Apparently it comes from “beech” as in beech tree because the Saxons and Germans usually wrote runes on pieces of beechen board.”
“The whole long range of hills was clad in beech woods, and beautiful, turreted castles peeped out here and there.”
“The bark of the beech is clear and smooth, as though nature had intended it for the use to which it has so often been applied by lovers – to carve on it a fair one's name.”
The Lady's Country Companion: or, How to Enjoy a Country Life Rationally
“It's also from a tree word, "bōc", which is similar to the Slavic words for "beech" -- probably the kind of tree most often used as a surface to carve or write words.”
“Young trees are frequently found growing upon these forest ruins; if a giant pine or oak has been levelled by some storm, the mass of matted roots and earth will stand upright for years in the same position into which it was raised by the falling trunk, and occasionally a good-sized hemlock, or pine, or beech, is seen growing from the summit of the mass, which in itself is perhaps ten or twelve feet high.”
“a native porphyritic green stone called beech-bowlder.”
“But a beech is a spindly thing compared to an oak.”
“The bow used by them is made of the wood of the Antarctic beech, which is scraped and worked into the desired shape by the sharp edge of one of the numerous shells which everywhere are found on the beach.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘beech’.
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Color Words for Shoes
Vendors can get oddly creative.
amaranth, brindle, iguana, slate black, madder brown, bison, pinecone, seal brown, forest night, burnt orange, monument, beet red and 399 more...
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
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strangelyrouge's Words
glockenspiel, gewgaw, jetsam, flotsam, gripe, grab, wench, whilst, betwixt, hither, thither, yonder and 1034 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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Words I have to learn
exasperate, felony, weld, fraud, worksheet, ransom, rehearse, preliminary, offshore, parole, infamous, sieve and 436 more...
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The O.U.P. Junior Dictionary Death Row
Another news story about words being removed from a dictionary before their time. See also the list of words added to the dictionary.
carol, cracker, holly, ivy, mistletoe, dwarf, elf, goblin, abbey, aisle, altar, bishop and 137 more...
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Chainlink's Words
hat, opalescent, opal, emerald, sapphire, scythe, carnival, calliope, brilliant, awesome, feather, fantastic and 268 more...
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Trees!
mahogany, sequoia, balsa, sandalwood, tamarind, balsam, eucalyptus, birch, willow, buttonwood, evergreen, loblolly and 501 more...
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Stately Plants
The flowers and trees of states and nations.
camellia, forget-me-not, saguaro cactus, apple blossom, Calafornia poppy, Rocky Mountain, mountain laurel, peach blossom, American beauty rose, orange blossom, Cherokee rose, pua aloalo and 210 more...
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Nullologue
nullologue, vaudeville, debauchery, debauched, libertine, nothing, dhadak, tz pf, nothingology, goodbyeology, sharmuta, manifesto and 866 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (B)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
balcony, bailey, baguette, bairn, balalaika, baldric, balefire, baby's breath, ballet, balm of gilead, balsam, baluster and 188 more...
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2008 Wordlist
Hopefully, I'll be using this site for more than one year. It will be fun then to look back and see what new words I found worthy of notice in any given year.
All words spotted in 2008...longanimity, permalancer, breeder, biodegradable, handicapable, gender-neutral, translator, interpreter, translation, interpreting, kleptocracy, fanfiction and 1598 more...
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wordrainbow
A big list of color names for use on wordrainbow.com
emerald, cherry, coffee, cream, almond, gold, kiwi, green, grass green, aquamarine, beet red, sepia and 714 more...
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Flowers/plants
yarrow, chicory, black-eyed susan, goldenrod, bluebell, columbine, prickly pear, periwinkle, myrtle, forget-me-not, trillium, celadine and 61 more...
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Blue remembered hills
Flora, fauna and other things common in the time and place where I grew up
millipede, dock leaf, snowdrop, nettle, ragwort, oxeye, moss, bindweed, lichen, hay, forget-me-not, bluebell and 62 more...
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Aw, Nuts
What it says. Including the ones that aren't really nuts, like peanuts and almonds.
walnut, chestnut, pecan, cashew, peanut, brazil nut, pistachio, hazelnut, almond, coconut, macademia, filbert and 22 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for beech.
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