hackmatack
hackmatack noun: a larch, a tree of the species Larix laricina.
Noun
hackmatack (plural hackmatacks)
- A larch, a tree of the species Larix laricina.
- The hackmatack is remarkable for having a principal root, which sometimes equals in size the trunk to which it belongs.1867, Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the year 1866, page 483
- A balsam poplar, a tree of the species Populus balsamifera.
Synonyms of hackmatack
Forms of hackmatack
| plural | hackmatacks |
|---|
Origin of hackmatack
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 tamarack and hackmatack, as was already recognized by Chamberlain 1902. This makes the precise Algonquian words involved difficult to recover. Compare the late 19th century German Low German term Hackemtackem (“tacamahac (medicinal resin)”).
Questions about hackmatack
- What does hackmatack mean?
- Hackmatack means a larch, a tree of the species Larix laricina.
- What part of speech is hackmatack?
- Hackmatack is a noun.
- What is the plural of hackmatack?
- The plural of hackmatack is hackmatacks.
Words near hackmatack in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hackmatack (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “hackmatack.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hackmatack. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.