Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of several trees of the genus Nyssa, especially N. aquatica, of the southeast United States, having soft light wood.
- n. The wood of this tree.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. One of several species of Nyssa, most commonly N. sylvatica (N, multiflora), the pepperidge, sour-gum, or black-gum. See black-gum, and cut under Nyssa. The sour tupelo is N. capitata, otherwise called
gopher-plum and Ogeechee lime, (Seelime .) The large tupelo, cotton- or tupelo-gum, is N. uniflora, a large tree of deep swamps and river-bottoms in the southern United States. Its wood, which is light, soft, and unwedgeable, is used in turnery, largely for woodenware, for wooden shoes, etc.; that of the root is used for the floats of nets, Sargent.
Wiktionary
- n. Any of several trees of the genus Nyssa which grow in swampy regions on the eastern, southern and midwestern United States.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Bot.) A North American tree (Nyssa multiflora) of the Dogwood family, having brilliant, glossy foliage and acid red berries. The wood is crossgrained and very difficult to split. Called also
black gum ,sour gum , andpepperidge .
WordNet 3.0
- n. a town in northeast Mississippi
- n. any of several gum trees of swampy areas of North America
- n. pale soft wood of a tupelo tree especially the water gum
Etymologies
- From Creek. (Wiktionary)
- Probably Creek 'topilwa : íto, tree + opílwa, swamp. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The next in importance being the "tupelo" or "bay poplar," and the least of the trio is designated as "black" or”
“And now this is all open water and dead cypress and tupelo trees.”
“Acorns were falling, tupelo berries were ripe in the river bottoms, squirrels were feeding heavily, leaves were on the trees and the obligatory frost was close enough that warbles were not a problem.”
“Their champs include a small 14-foot-tall winterberry tree and a big water tupelo with a trunk 39½ feet in circumference.”
“Home brewers have been known to buy $1,000 worth of Spanish saffron or hundreds of pounds of tupelo honey to flavor their concoctions.”
“Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey.”
“I drove up on the levee, my windows down, to my left a wide bay dotted with cypress trees, to my right a string of fish camps on a green bib that sloped down to another bay, this one reddening with the sunset, the fluted trunks of the tupelo gums flaring at the waterline, moss lifting in their limbs.”
“He wore cutoff denim shorts, and I paused a moment to admire his legs: lean and muscular, the color of tupelo honey.”
“While she may have taken the high road in resigning, being fired for the email would have made for a nice wrongful termination suit. tupelo”
“I may not be right, but I am a lot righter than those twits. tupelo”
You and me baby ain't nothing but mammals - The Panda's Thumb
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘tupelo’.
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beyond pale
Words meaning or invoking the different aspects of pale.
Not just colour, but also the ideas of impermanence, illness, weakness. (Just not the two noun forms – a thin strip of metal or woo...pale, pallid, wan, light, misty, ethereal, cream, dim, white, thin, waning, colourless and 62 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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snickclunk's Words
bespoke, freshet, coquette, lath, victrola, feckless, viridian, lariat, sargasso, sobriquet, grift, sophistry and 134 more...
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A Peckerwick of Fiffoldry
fogray, whalesong, solregn, shoecabbage, thorn-bush, thistledown, pomander, thornbush, dreamy duskywing, sedge, unbunting-like, quilp and 119 more...
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MacBean's Words
verisimilitude, antediluvian, schadenfreude, eviscerate, exsanguinate, onomatopoeia, aesthetic, apocryphal, aubergine, byronic, brouhaha, bordello and 523 more...
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Stellar Six-Letter Words
I've been meaning to make this list for at least a year, to go with Really Cool Two-Letter Words, Three-Letter Words, Four-Letter Words, Slightly Less Cool Four-Letter Words, and Five-Letter Words....
degust, tattoo, quahog, anoxia, acetic, rugose, bathos, umlaut, mohawk, python, harbor, panzer and 78 more...
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Honey List
Honey varieties of all sorts. These are "monofloral", meaning the predominant source of nectar was from a single plant species.
"Polyfloral" honey is derived from a variety of nectar ...basswood, gallberry, clover, tupelo, sourwood, alfalfa, huajillo, orange blossom, kiawe, lehua, thistle, sage and 20 more...
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stompin' and pickin'
clementine, wabash cannonball, chicory, fisticuffs, flapjacks, grifter, hoedown, honky tonk, tupelo, tarnation, trestle, sorghum and 44 more...
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ogham
birch, rowan, alder, willow, ash, hawthorn, oak, holly, hazel, apple, blackthorn, elder and 79 more...
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the grove
hawthorn, poplar, cedar, myrtle, rowan, oak, hornbeam, alder, yew, hazel, cypress, elder and 64 more...
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I like : T
taciturn, tangible, tellurium, temerarious, temperance, temporal, teraphim, terra firma, tetragrammaton, thallium, thelema, thor and 31 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for tupelo.

bilby John has a boat? So that's how he keeps Wordie afloat. Nov 10, 2009
hernesheir A type of honey from the SE United States which bees produce when these trees of swamps and floodplains bloom. Traditionally, beekeepers move the bee boxes by skiff or johnboat or other water craft into the swamps to isolated upland areas to let the bees do their work. The honey thus produced in the combs is of a very fine grade and flavor, and sought after by many. Nov 10, 2009