Word.ws English Dictionary

oak fern

oak fern noun: a fern of genus Gymnocarpium (syn. Thelypteris) which grows on trees, especially Gymnocarpium dryopteris.

oak fern: a fern of genus Gymnocarpium (syn. Thelypteris) which grows on trees, especially Gymnocarpium...
Image: Walter Siegmund, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

oak fern (plural oak ferns)

  1. A fern of genus Gymnocarpium (syn. Thelypteris) which grows on trees, especially Gymnocarpium dryopteris.
  2. A bat's wing fern (Histiopteris incisa)
  3. Synonym of common polypody (Polypodium vulgare), a fern formerly thought to have medicinal properties when found growing on an oak.
    • Why say we, that […] to know the vertue of Reubarb, qualitie of Oak ferne, and operation of Polipodie, is only peculiar unto man?, II.12
    Synonyms:
    common polypody

Synonyms of oak fern

Forms of oak fern

pluraloak ferns
alternative formoakfern

Questions about oak fern

What does oak fern mean?
Oak fern means a fern of genus Gymnocarpium (syn. Thelypteris) which grows on trees, especially Gymnocarpium dryopteris.
What part of speech is oak fern?
Oak fern is a noun.
What is the plural of oak fern?
The plural of oak fern is oak ferns.

Words near oak fern in the dictionary

  1. Oak Bluffs
  2. Oak Brook
  3. Oak Cliff
  4. Oak Creek
  5. oak decline
  6. oak fern
  7. oak ferns
  8. Oak Forest
  9. oak gall
  10. oak galls
  11. Oak Glen

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: oak fern (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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