hemlock

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What they also have in common is that they are too far from surviving fragments of coastal forest for native successors to the alder -- hemlock, spruce, cedar, cottonwood or fir -- to reseed naturally.

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Definitions (15)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (4)

  1. noun Any of various coniferous evergreen trees of the genus Tsuga of North America and eastern Asia, having small cones and short flat leaves with two white bands underneath.
  2. noun The wood of such trees, used as a source of lumber, wood pulp, and tannic acid.
  3. noun Any of several poisonous plants of the genera Conium and Cicuta, such as the poison hemlock.

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Examples (50)

  • What they also have in common is that they are too far from surviving fragments of coastal forest for native successors to the alder -- hemlock, spruce, cedar, cottonwood or fir -- to reseed naturally. —  Tyee - Home
  • "Sounds like the hemlock is going the way of the chestnut," said board member Robert Barrett, referring to a fungus that wiped out virtually all American chestnut trees in North America starting in 1904. —  News/local from www.dailyamerican.com
  • When under the hemlock, the mass of branches screened it perfectly, and your attention was wholly taken by the other nest, standing out in bold relief in the dead tree-top Such wisdom, if wisdom it were and not chance, is gained only by experience. —  Wood Folk at School
  • Or, chamomile flowers, hemlock, and many other plants, may be boiled, and the part fomented with the hot liquor, by means of flannels wetted with the decoction 2603. —  The Book of Household Management
  • Of course no flowers could be used in that temperature, so the silver vases held branches of spruce, hemlock, and other —  The Days Before Yesterday
 

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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English hemlok, poisonous hemlock, from Old English hymlice, hemlic.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from Middle English hemlok, also written humlok, humloke, homelok, irreg. from Anglo-Saxon hemlic, hymelic (genitive hemlices), also hymlice (genitive hymlican), oldest form hymblicæ, hemlock; apparently from hem-, hym-, of unknown origin, + -lic, -lice; a termination supposed to be identical with that in Anglo-Saxon cerlic, English charlock, and late Anglo-Saxon bærlic, English barley: see barley.
 

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/ˈhɛmlɑk/
by American Heritage

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