Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. See redwood.
- n. Giant sequoia.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A genus of coniferous trees, of the tribe Abietineæ and subtribe Taxodinæ. It is characterized by an oval cone, with persistent woody scales each bearing about five ovules, and dilated upward in fruit into a rhomboidal wrinkled and flattened slightly prickle-tip-ped apex. The flowers are monœcious, terminal or axillary on young shoots, with their scales spirally set. The small and involucrate staminate flower consists of an oblong column of united stamens, bearing crowded ovate connective scales, each with three to five anthers. The compressed seed bears a thick spongy margin, and contains four to six seed-leaves. There are but two species, both Californian, and ranking among the most remarkable of trees, growing straight, tall, and columnar, with short densely spreading branches, soft red wood, and very thick fibrous and spongy bark. They bear acute, compressed, and keeled decurrent narrow leaves, which are alternate and spirally inserted, or spread in two ranks on the younger branches. Their small cones ripen in the second year. For S. sempervirens, discovered by Menzies about 1794, see
redwood . The other species, S. gigantea, by some formerly separated as a genus, Washingtonia (Winslow, 1854), and the Wellingtonia of English gardens, is the mammoth tree or big tree of California. It is a less graceful tree, with shorter branches, pendulous branchlets, paler appressed leaves, its wood a duller red, with thin white sapwood, its bark near the ground 1 to 2 feet thick, and its cones much larger (2 or 3 inches long). It forms a series of forests in Tulare county, California, isolated groves extending 240 miles northward, and it has been recently (November, 1890) reported from southern Oregon. The tallest tree now known, one of the Calaveras grove, is 325 feet high; one known as the Grizzly Giant, in the Mariposa grove, is 93 feet in circumference at the ground; 1,200 rings were counted in a tree 11 feet in diameter. Both species were early classed under Taxodium (which see), their nearest American living relative; a closer ally, however, is Athrotaxis (Don, 1839), a genus of three Tasmanian trees distinguished by a cone with mucronate or umbonate scales; their other living relatives are a few distant and mostly monotypic genera of Japan and China. (CompareTaxodinæ .) A very large number of fossil species are known with certainty, showing that the genus was much more abundant in late Cretaceous and Tertiary time than at present.
Wiktionary
- n. Sequoiadendron giganteum, a coniferous evergreen tree formerly in the genus Sequoia, now placed in Sequoiadendron.
- n. Sequoia sempervirens, a coniferous evergreen tree, the only living species of the genus Sequoia.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Bot.) A genus of coniferous trees, consisting of two species, Sequoia Washingtoniana, syn. S. gigantea, the “big tree” of California, and S. sempervirens, the redwood, both of which attain an immense height.
WordNet 3.0
- n. either of two huge coniferous California trees that reach a height of 300 feet; sometimes placed in the Taxodiaceae
Etymologies
- From the genus Sequoia. (Wiktionary)
- New Latin Sequoia, genus name, after Sequoya. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“He showed me simulated flythroughs of a giant sequoia forest and a forest of smaller trees created using data from the ECHIDNA on his computer.”
“Why not stick to protecting wild places and wild creatures -- like sea turtles and sequoia trees?”
The Huffington Post: Michael Brune: Why Do Sea Turtles Need Solar Panels?
“The General Sherman sequoia in Sequoia National Park is the largest tree in the country and the world with a score of 1,290.”
“Equally amazing was the ability of the sell-out audiences at the outdoor amphitheater in the celestial vault of the Parc du Château de Florans, a venue bordered by 365 plane trees and a sprinkling of sequoia redwoods, to accommodate and enjoy the extraordinary range of performances, often on two different programs per evening, from solo recitals of the most intimate nature to the great concertos with orchestra.”
“Equally amazing was the ability of the sell-out audiences at the outdoor amphitheater in the celestial vault of the Parc du Château de Florans, a venue bordered by 365 plane trees and a sprinkling of sequoia redwoods, to accommodate and enjoy the extraordinary range of performances, often on two different programs per evening, from solo recitals of the most intimate nature to the great concertos with orchestra.”
“Richard had turned from O'Mare's records of his accounts to mull over a peculiarly fantastic sketch (mermaids, a sequoia forest, a flock of doves) that O'Mare had recently proposed for the bar wall of Maxies 'Club De Luxe, when the street door suddenly flew open and a strange character stepped in.”
“Instead he openly barked on the fast-growing sequoia of Stalinist dictatorship.”
The Huffington Post: Pavel Somov, Ph.D.: Pavlovian Sleight-of-Words
“Most unsettling of all is a portrait by a colleague in which Muybridge hunches, scowling with paranoia, at the base of a patriarchal sequoia, apparently ready to wriggle into a cavity between its roots.”
“The views of granite cliffs, waterfalls and giant sequoia groves from high-elevation Tioga Pass are some of the most stunning in the country, and they're only accessible during the summer.”
“Tiare and jasmine shouted happy stories across continents, magnolias made mad love as their roots stretched deep into the wet fertile soil, while sequoia and kauri reached with their arms toward heaven.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sequoia’.
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Brand Theft Auto
A marque list for cars--models or companies who've used common words as their name.
explorer, navigator, frontier, mustang, quest, cougar, sidekick, legend, legacy, ranger, voyager, civic and 266 more...
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Realia from Everywhere
Culturally defined terms and expressions from the four corners of the world
fjord, mistral steppe, tornado, tsunami, polder, kiwi, koala, sequoia, Abominable Snowman, paprika, spaghetti, empanada and 299 more...
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Words with Four Consecutive Vowels
This oughta be a short list, eh?
queue, queuing, homoiousian, miaou, onomatopoeia, hawaiian, iroquoian, kauai, kilauea, longueuil, louie, montesquieu and 58 more...
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Triphthongs
Words with triphthongs in
layer, player, payee, pompeii, tyre, fire, higher, liar, employer, soya, paranoia, sequoia and 14 more...
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howtoflyhome's list
tacenda, ubiquarian, codify, velleity, psithurism, susurration, palaver, haplology, allophony, austere, popinjay, redolent and 11 more...
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four vowels in a row
aqueous, nonaqueous, subaqueous, terraqueous, hawaiian, obsequious, onomatopoeia, pharmacopoeia, queue, queuer, miaou, sequoia and 24 more...
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From the Algonquin et al.
Words derived from the innumerable languages of native Americans and the First Nations of Canada. I want to shine some light on this underexposed etymological background to so many common (and som...
raccoon, persimmon, mummichog, caucus, bayou, caribou, geoduck, chipmunk, skunk, opossum, moose, squash and 84 more...
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phonetically speaking
they just sound nice
veranda, sequoia, boudoir, plinth, sinews, abeyance, engastrimyth, circumlocution, acedia, cadaver, ether
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fredrx's beautiful sounding list
two most beautiful words when put together
womb, philistine, poignant, wombastic, eschelon, macabre, precipitous, panache, misogynist, placebo, cacophony, aplomb and 43 more...
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Is it morning yet?
coterie, lexeme, counterbalance, forthright, pigtail, ponytail, french-braid, barrette, listless, counsel, sitting duck, dead duck and 268 more...
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If-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-...
Words that have been used as baby names, including virtue names, nature names, place names, etc.
The title is an actual name given to a Puritan boy in the 17th century.faith, hope, grace, charity, chastity, prudence, patience, temperance, river, phoenix, stone, violet and 455 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (S)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
sabian symbols, saffron, sagacious, sage, salamander, sally lunn, salmon, salsify, salt water taffy, samhain, sand dollar, sandalwood and 270 more...
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whatever1013's Words
chocolate, sesquipedalophobia, discombobulated, callipygian, retronym, squirm, cobalt blue, plethora, onomatopoeia, blowhard, strumpet, shush and 173 more...
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Words I'd Like to Use Someday
thundersnow, phantasmagoria, mercurial, chimerical, taciturn, paraclete, lapis lazuli, flay, guttersnipe, wonky, misanthrope, kestrel and 583 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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artoparts's Words
illation, finite, edify, abide, abrade, vouch, amiss, vociferate, perusing, techantiquery, rigamarole, holon and 615 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for sequoia.

oroboros Eutopia is shown as obsolete. Sequoia is the shortest common word to contain all vowels according to Will Shortz (intro to "Wordplay: A curious dictionary of language oddities" by Chris Cole). May 16, 2008
skipvia How about "eutopia?" Oct 3, 2007
aceacetwothree Shortest word that uses all 5 vowels. Dec 10, 2006