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tamarack

[tam-uh-rak]
noun
  1. an American larch, Larix laricina, of the pine family, having a reddish-brown bark and crowded clusters of blue-green needles and yielding a useful timber.
  2. any of several related, very similar trees.
  3. the wood of these trees.
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Origin of tamarack

1795–1805, Americanism; compare Canadian French tamarac; assumed to be of Algonquian orig.
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Examples from the Web for tamarack

Historical Examples

  • The timber growth—­none at all or very scanty spruce and tamarack.

    The Long Labrador Trail

    Dillon Wallace

  • In the course of time Kagh came to the edge of a tamarack swamp.

  • But she began to confide in Tom after this evening of her return from the tamarack swamp.

  • The lumbermen have little use for the tamarack and so have passed it by.

    Conservation Reader

    Harold W. Fairbanks

  • Once he rode with a party of boys and girls to Tamarack Lake.

    The Trail of the Hawk

    Sinclair Lewis

British Dictionary definitions for tamarack

tamarack

noun
  1. any of several North American larches, esp Larix laricina, which has reddish-brown bark, bluish-green needle-like leaves, and shiny oval cones
  2. the wood of any of these trees
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Word Origin

C19: from Algonquian
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for tamarack

n.

North American red larch, 1805, probably of Algonquian origin (cf. synonymous hackmatack, 1792, from a source akin to Abenaki akemantak "a kind of supple wood used for making snowshoes").

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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper