tacamahac
noun
Forms tacamahacs tacamahaca
- noun A bitter balsamic resin or resinous exudation obtained from tropical American trees of the family Burseraceae (Bursera tomentosa and Icica tacamahaca), from East Indian trees of the genus Calophyllum, or from the balsam poplar (Populus balsamifera).
- noun Any tree yielding tacamahac resin, especially, in North America, balsam poplar (Populus balsamifera) or balm of Gilead.
Synonyms
Etymology
From Spanish, from Nahuatl thecomahaca, to use the spelling of Hernandez 1614.
In European languages there was contamination between tacamahac and various Algonquian words containing the final Proto-Algonquian *-a·xkw- (“hardwood or deciduous tree”), including the sources of tamarack and hackmatack, as was already recognized by Chamberlain 1902.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A bitter balsamic resin obtained from tropical American trees of the genus Elaphrium (E. tomentosum and E. Tacamahaca), and also from East Indian trees of the genus Calophyllum; also, the resinous exhudation of the balsam poplar.
- noun Any tree yielding tacamahac resin, especially, in North America, the balsam poplar, or balm of Gilead (Populus balsamifera).
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “tacamahac”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details