sumac
Pronunciation: /ˈs(j)uːmæk/
The English word “sumac” has 5 meanings listed here.
noun
- Any of various shrubs or small trees of the genus Rhus and certain other genera in Anacardiaceae.
- particularly, one of species Rhus coriaria (tanner's sumac)
- Dried and chopped-up leaves and stems of a plant of the genus Rhus, particularly tanner's sumac (see sense 1), used for dyeing and tanning leather or for medicinal purposes.
- A sour spice popular in the Eastern Mediterranean, made from the berries of tanner's sumac.
verb
Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English sumac, asimac, simak, sumak, symak (“portions of the shrub Rhus coriaria, chiefly used for medicinal purposes”), from Anglo-Norman sumak, symak, and Old French sumac, or directly from its etymon Medieval Latin sumach, sumac, from Arabic سُمَّاق (summāq), from Classical Syriac ܣܘܡܩܐ (summāqā, “red; sumac”). The English word is cognate with Italian sommaco,…
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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.