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hemlock

Definitions

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

  • noun Any of various coniferous evergreen trees of the genus Tsuga of North America and eastern Asia, having small cones and short flat leaves with two white bands underneath.
  • noun The wood of such trees, used as a source of lumber, wood pulp, and tannic acid.
  • noun Any of several poisonous plants of the genera Conium and Cicuta of the parsley family, such as the poison hemlock.
  • noun A poison obtained from the poison hemlock.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A poisonous plant, Conium maculatum, of the natural order Umbelliferæ.
  • noun The hemlock-spruce.

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

  • noun (Bot.) The name of several poisonous umbelliferous herbs having finely cut leaves and small white flowers, as the Cicuta maculata, Cicuta bulbifera, and Cicuta virosa, and the Conium maculatum. See conium.
  • noun (Bot.) An evergreen tree common in North America (Abies Canadensis or Tsuga Canadensis); hemlock spruce.
  • noun The wood or timber of the hemlock tree.
  • noun See under Ground.

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

  • noun Any of several poisonous umbelliferous plants, of the genera Conium (Conium maculatum and Conium chaerophylloides) and Cicuta.
  • noun The poison obtained from these plants.
  • noun Any of several coniferous trees, of the genus Tsuga, that grow in North America; the wood of such trees.

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

  • noun an evergreen tree
  • noun poisonous drug derived from an Eurasian plant of the genus Conium
  • noun large branching biennial herb native to Eurasia and Africa and adventive in North America having large fernlike leaves and white flowers; usually found in damp habitats; all parts extremely poisonous
  • noun soft coarse splintery wood of a hemlock tree especially the western hemlock

Etymologies

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

[Middle English hemlok, poisonous hemlock, from Old English hymlice, hemlic.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English hemlok, hemeluc, from Old English hymlīc, hymlīce ("hemlock, bryony, convulvus"), literally 'hops-like', from hymele ("hop-vine"), from Proto-Germanic *humalaz, *humalōn, from Sarmato-Scythian *haumala, diminutive of *hauma (“ephedra; juice”), from Proto-Indo-Iranian *sauma from Proto-Indo-European *seue- (“to suck; juice”).

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Examples

  • This kind of hemlock is also abundant along the coast of British Columbia and in the Selkirk Mountains along the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

    The Forest Wealth of Canada 1907

  • I think the hemlock is taking affect on Bill already.

    Puff This! 2008

  • He has special ordered hemlock from a lumber yard 100 miles away.

    Bill Heavey's Deer Diary: Come Hell or Home Improvement 2007

  • The usual verdure of the hemlock is very dark and glossy, lying in double rows flat upon the branches.

    Rural Hours 1887

  • Approaching it from this side you pass through a dense bryanthus-fringed grove of mountain hemlock, catching glimpses now and then of the colossal dome towering to an immense height above the dark evergreens; and when at last you have made your way across woods, wading through azalea and ledum thickets, you step abruptly out of the tree shadows and mossy leafy softness upon a bare porphyry pavement, and behold the dome unveiled in all its grandeur.

    The Yosemite National Park 1969

  • Approaching it from this side you pass through a dense bryanthus-fringed grove of mountain hemlock, catching glimpses now and then of the colossal dome towering to an immense height above the dark evergreens; and when at last you have made your way across woods, wading through azalea and ledum thickets, you step abruptly out of the tree shadows and mossy leafy softness upon a bare porphyry pavement, and behold the dome unveiled in all its grandeur.

    The Yosemite National Park 1899

  • An ingenious murderess decides to soak the blotter on her husband’s desk in hemlock, so he will be gradually poisoned as the hemlock leaches out and into his hands whenever he works late into the night. hemlock/Shakespeare

    What’s My Name Again? 2008

  • An ingenious murderess decides to soak the blotter on her husband’s desk in hemlock, so he will be gradually poisoned as the hemlock leaches out and into his hands whenever he works late into the night. hemlock/Shakespeare

    May 2008 2008

  • The leaf of the hemlock is the only one that has a distinct leaf-stalk.

    Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study Ontario. Ministry of Education

  • Range: The hemlock is a northern tree, growing in Canada and the United

    Studies of Trees Jacob Joshua Levison

Comments

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  • vanishedone commented on the word hemlock

    Here's a paper discussing whether it's probable that hemlock really was the poison that killed Socrates, in light of the standard objection that the symptoms described by Plato seem not to fit. Apparently the word 'hemlock' has quite a chequered history:

    Most ancient writers seem to have known very well which herb they were talking about when they spoke of hemlock... Yet as time passed, the identity of the Athenian plant grew less certain... and with the translation of Greek kôneion into Latin cicuta and then into English 'hemlock,' the name took on a more or less generic meaning.

    In English, 'hemlock' refers not only to poison hemlock, but to water hemlock, hemlock water dropwort, lesser hemlock (fool’s parsley), and other herbs as well... Through the centuries Latin cicuta became virtually an English word, a synonym for all types of hemlock. At the same time it acquired a somewhat more scientific veneer, for botanical works were written in Latin all the way through the eighteenth century. With no agreed upon system of plant names, each botanist not only used the names however he wished but invented more of his own. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the confusion of the hemlocks was enormous, with literally dozens of different plants assigned various versions of the names cicuta and cicutaria, in scores of botanical works. No one could keep up with it anymore.

    Linnaeus brought some order to the world of plants with his great scheme of plant classification, but paradoxically, when it came to the confusion of the hemlocks, he seems to have made matters even worse. For he separated Greek kôneion and Latin cicuta, assigning the name Conium to poison hemlock and Cicuta to water hemlock... But the Greek and Latin terms had travelled together through the ages, and they could not so readily be divorced, whether in popular language or in general medical discussions.

    February 23, 2008

  • vendingmachine commented on the word hemlock

    Hemlock or conium is a highly toxic flowering plant indigenous to Europe and South Africa. For an adult, the ingestion of 100mg of conium or about 8 leaves of the plant is fatal. Death comes in the form of paralysis One's mind is wide awake, but the body doesn’t respond and eventually the respiratory system shuts down.

    February 27, 2015