tamarack
noun
Forms tamaracks
- noun Any of several North American larches, of the genus Larix.
- noun especially, Larix laricina
- noun Wood from such a tree.
Synonyms
American larch weeping hemlock hackmatack black larch tamarak tacamahac Larix laricina
Etymology
From Canadian French tamarac, believed to derive from an Algonquian word.
In European languages there was contamination between tacamahac, from Nahuatl, 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. This makes the precise Algonquian words involved difficult to recover.
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “tamarack”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details