Word.ws English Dictionary

hempe

hempe is the obsolete spelling of hemp.

Meaning of hemp

Noun

hemp (countable and uncountable, plural hemps)

  1. A tall annual herb, Cannabis sativa, native to Asia.
    • Among Turks, pills consisting of hemp buds, muscat nuts, saffron, and honey were a popular aphrodisiac.1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 113
  2. Various products of this plant, including fibres and the drug cannabis.
  3. (historical, slang) The gallows.
    • A hundred and fifty years ago, Cotton Mather bewails the carnal attractions of the tavern and the training field, and tells of an old Indian, who imperfectly understood the English tongue but desperately mastered enough of it to express a desire for instant hemp rather than listen to any more...1864, James Russell Lowell, Fireside Travels

See all 4 meanings of hemp

Questions about hempe

What is hempe the obsolete spelling of?
Hempe is the obsolete spelling of hemp.

Words near hempe in the dictionary

  1. hemp-vines
  2. hemp-widow
  3. hemp-widows
  4. hempbush
  5. hempcrete
  6. hempe
  7. Hempel
  8. Hempel's paradox
  9. Hempelian
  10. Hempels
  11. hempen

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hempe (page history and authors); hemp (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: “hempe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hempe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.