HEMLOCK • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Hemlock

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/hˈɛmlˌɑk/ Listen

noun

Hemlock n.

(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. Note: The potion of hemlock administered to Socrates is by some thought to have been a decoction of Cicuta virosa, or water hemlock, by others, of Conium maculatum.

(Bot.) An evergreen tree common in North America (Abies Canadensis or Tsuga Canadensis); hemlock spruce. "The murmuring pines and the hemlocks."

The wood or timber of the hemlock tree.

Ground hemlock, or Dwarf hemlock. See under Ground.

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Etymology of 'Hemlock'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Hemlock" Quotes from Famous Books

... build a fire of pine, and the tree which bears poisonous flowers[A], and the hemlock, and the grape-vine which bears no fruit. They did as he bade them, and made the fire flame high. Then Sketupah prepared the sacrifice. First he skinned the wolf, then he shelled the tortoise. He bound the wolf's skin upon himself with the snake, and with his entrails he fastened the shell ...

— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... this self-excusing sophistry he darted up the brook. The banks were steep and thickly meshed with rhododendron, from which hemlock shot like black arrows upward, but the boy threaded through them like a snake. His breast was hardly heaving when he reached a small plateau hundreds of feet above the road, where two branches of the stream met from narrower ravines right and ...

— In Happy Valley • John Fox

... the trees declining or any other cause, I know not.... The lime trees, which had some appearance of Budding when I went away, are now withering—and the Horse chestnut & Tree box from Colo. Harry Lee's discover little signs of shooting.—the Hemlock is almost entirely dead, & bereft of their leaves;—and so are the live Oak.—In short half the Trees in the Shrubberies & many in the Walk are ...

— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth

... him who fain would teach the world The world holds hate in fee— For Socrates, the hemlock cup; For Christ, Gethsemane. ...

— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis

... bands, that is, the guards, I presume, have been engaged in the interests of the Imperial Prince; but still I think that little John of Archangel will be heard upon this occasion, unless prevented by a quieting draught of hemlock or nightshade; for I suppose they are not arrived to the politer and genteeler poisons of Acqua Tufana,—[Acqua Tufana, a Neapolitan slow poison, resembling clear water, and invented by a woman at Naples, of the name of ...

— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

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