Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of several poisonous evergreen coniferous trees or shrubs of the genus Taxus, having scarlet cup-shaped arils and flat needles that are dark green above and yellowish below. Yews contain compounds used in medicine and are often grown as ornamentals.
  • noun The wood of any of these trees, especially the durable, fine-grained wood of the Eurasian and North African species Taxus baccata, used in cabinetmaking and for archery bows.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To rise as scum on brine in boiling; yaw.
  • noun A tree of the genus Taxus, the common yew being T. baccata of temperate Europe and Asia.
  • noun The wood of the yew-tree.
  • noun A shooting-bow made of the wood of the yew.
  • noun A jug or jar having a handle extending over the mouth.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) An evergreen tree (Taxus baccata) of Europe, allied to the pines, but having a peculiar berrylike fruit instead of a cone. It frequently grows in British churchyards.
  • noun The wood of the yew. It is light red in color, compact, fine-grained, and very elastic. It is preferred to all other kinds of wood for bows and whipstocks, the best for these purposes coming from Spain.
  • noun A bow for shooting, made of the yew.
  • adjective Of or pertaining to yew trees; made of the wood of a yew tree.
  • intransitive verb See yaw.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun countable A species of coniferous tree, Taxus baccata, with dark-green flat needle-like leaves and seeds bearing red arils, native to western, central and southern Europe, northwest Africa, northern Iran and southwest Asia.
  • noun countable, by extension Any tree or shrub of the genus Taxus.
  • noun uncountable The wood of the yew.
  • adjective Made from the wood of the yew tree.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun wood of a yew; especially the durable fine-grained light brown or red wood of the English yew valued for cabinetwork and archery bows
  • noun any of numerous evergreen trees or shrubs having red cup-shaped berries and flattened needlelike leaves

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English īw.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English ew, from Old English īw, ēow, from Proto-Germanic *īwaz (compare Icelandic ýr), masculine variant of *īwō (compare Dutch ijf, German Eibe), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eiH-u̯eh₂ (compare Hittite  (eja, "type of evergreen"), Welsh yw ("yews"), Lithuanian ievà ("bird cherry"), Russian ива (íva, "willow")).

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