Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various deciduous trees of the genus Fagus having smooth gray bark, alternate simple leaves, and three-sided nuts enclosed in prickly burs, including F. sylvatica of Europe and its many cultivated forms, and F. grandifolia of eastern North America.
- noun The wood of any of these trees, used for flooring, containers, plywood, and tool handles.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Obsolete spelling of
beach . - noun Any one of several trees of different genera having a real or fancied resemblance to the true beeches; especially, Cryptocarya glaucescens, of the laurel family. Also called
she-beech and black beech. - noun A tree of the genus Fagus, natural order Cupuliferœ.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Bot.) A tree of the genus Fagus.
- noun (Bot.) a parasitic plant which grows on the roots of beeches (
Epiphegus Americana ). - noun (Zoöl.) the stone marten of Europe (
Mustela foina ). - noun the nuts of the beech, esp. as they lie under the trees, in autumn.
- noun oil expressed from the mast or nuts of the beech tree.
- noun a variety of the European beech with copper-colored, shining leaves.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A tree of the genus
Fagus having a smooth, light grey trunk,oval , pointed leaves and many branches. - noun The
wood of the beech tree.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun any of several large deciduous trees with rounded spreading crowns and smooth grey bark and small sweet edible triangular nuts enclosed in burs; north temperate regions
- noun wood of any of various beech trees; used for flooring and containers and plywood and tool handles
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The PLUS mills are made in beech wood and come in 3 versions; a white salt, a black peppermill and a multicoloured version that has both the salt and pepper option.
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The nearest Japanese site is Shirakami-Sanchi in the far north of Honshu which preserves the last virgin Japanese beech forest and the vulnerable Japanese black bear but is not at all comparable in richness of species except for insects.
Shiretoko, Japan 2008
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Apparently it comes from “beech” as in beech tree because the Saxons and Germans usually wrote runes on pieces of beechen board.
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The whole long range of hills was clad in beech woods, and beautiful, turreted castles peeped out here and there.
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The bark of the beech is clear and smooth, as though nature had intended it for the use to which it has so often been applied by lovers – to carve on it a fair one's name.
The Lady's Country Companion: or, How to Enjoy a Country Life Rationally Jane 1845
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It's also from a tree word, "bōc", which is similar to the Slavic words for "beech" -- probably the kind of tree most often used as a surface to carve or write words.
Linguistical musings: Bookish, Bibliophilic, Literary Book Nerd 2009
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It's also from a tree word, "bōc", which is similar to the Slavic words for "beech" -- probably the kind of tree most often used as a surface to carve or write words.
Archive 2009-06-24 Book Nerd 2009
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Young trees are frequently found growing upon these forest ruins; if a giant pine or oak has been levelled by some storm, the mass of matted roots and earth will stand upright for years in the same position into which it was raised by the falling trunk, and occasionally a good-sized hemlock, or pine, or beech, is seen growing from the summit of the mass, which in itself is perhaps ten or twelve feet high.
Rural Hours 1887
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a native porphyritic green stone called beech-bowlder.
Customs and Fashions in Old New England Alice Morse Earle 1881
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But a beech is a spindly thing compared to an oak.
The Lampshade Mark Jacobson 2010
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