oak
UK /əʊk/ · US /oʊk/ noun, adjective, verb
Forms oaks oaking oaked woak yack oke
- noun (countable) A deciduous tree with distinctive deeply lobed leaves, acorns, and notably strong wood, typically of England and northeastern North America, included in genus Quercus.
- noun (uncountable) The wood of the oak.
- noun A rich brown color, like that of oak wood.
- noun (wine) The flavor of oak.
- noun Any member of species of the genus Quercus, in family Fagaceae.
- noun she-oaks in Allocasuarina and Casuarina, of family Casuarinaceae
- noun white oaks Lagunaria, in family Malvaceae
- noun silky oaks, in family Proteaceae
- adjective Having a rich brown color, like that of oak wood.
- adjective Made of oak wood or timber.
- verb (wine, transitive) To expose to oak in order for the oak to impart its flavors.
Synonyms
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English ake, hok, oek, ok, oke, from Old English aac, āc, ǣċ, from Proto-West Germanic *aik, from Proto-Germanic *aiks (“oak”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eyǵ- (“oak”).
From Proto-Germanic: Scots aik, ake, yik (“oak”), North Frisian iake, iik (“oak”), Saterland Frisian Eeke (“oak”), West Frisian iik (“oak”), Cimbrian aicha, oach (“oak”), Dutch eik (“oak”), German Eiche (“oak”), Luxembourgish Eech (“oak”), Vilamovian aach, aeh́, ǡh́ (“oak”), Danish eg (“oak”), Faroese, Icelandic, and Norwegian Nynorsk eik (“oak”), Norwegian Bokmål eik, ek (“oak”), Swedish ek (“oak”).
From Proto-Indo-European: Latin aesculus (“Italian oak”), Ancient Greek αἰγίλωψ (aigílōps, “Turkey oak”), Albanian enjë (“English yew; stinking juniper”), Latvian ozols (“oak”), Lithuanian ąžuolas (“oak”).
Webster’s 1913
- noun Any tree or shrub of the genus Quercus. The oaks have alternate leaves, often variously lobed, and staminate flowers in catkins. The fruit is a smooth nut, called an acorn, which is more or less inclosed in a scaly involucre called the cup or cupule. There are now recognized about three hundred species, of which nearly fifty occur in the United States, the rest in Europe, Asia, and the other parts of North America, a very few barely reaching the northern parts of South America and Africa. Many of the oaks form forest trees of grand proportions and live many centuries. The wood is usually hard
- noun The strong wood or timber of the oak.
Etymology [OE. oke, ok, ak, AS. ac; akin to D. eik, G. eiche, OHG. eih, Icel. eik, Sw. ek, Dan. eeg.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “oak”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details