Dictionaries › English

hackmatack

The English word “hackmatack” has 2 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A larch, a tree of the species Larix laricina.
  2. A balsam poplar, a tree of the species Populus balsamifera.

Etymology

Believed to derive from Abenaki, though no specific etymon has been found. The term is first attested in the 1760s–90s, when it was spelled hakmantak and referred to dense forest. 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…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “hackmatack” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.