teak

[ teek ]

noun
  1. a large East Indian tree, Tectona grandis, of the verbena family, yielding a hard, durable, resinous, yellowish-brown wood used for shipbuilding, making furniture, etc.

  2. the wood of this tree.

  1. any of various similar trees or woods.

Origin of teak

1
1665–75; earlier teke<Portuguese teca<Malayalam tēkka

Words Nearby teak

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use teak in a sentence

  • African teak, let me note, is not teak properly so called, but the timber of the Oldfieldia Africana.

    The Desert World | Arthur Mangin
  • One of the pleasures of being "on the road to Mandalay" was to see the-- "Elephints a-pilin' teak In the sludgy, squdgy creek"

  • In Siam the elephants are much used in managing the immense rafts of teak trees that are floated down the rivers for export.

British Dictionary definitions for teak

teak

/ (tiːk) /


noun
  1. a large verbenaceous tree, Tectona grandis, of the East Indies, having white flowers and yielding a valuable dense wood

  2. the hard resinous yellowish-brown wood of this tree, used for furniture making, etc

  1. any of various similar trees or their wood

  2. a brown or yellowish-brown colour

Origin of teak

1
C17: from Portuguese teca, from Malayalam tēkka

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