Other forms: hammocks
A hammock is a hanging bed of cloth or net slung between two supports. String a hammock, lie in a hammock, a hammock between two trees.
It sags into a curve, which is what makes it comfortable and what makes getting out of it difficult. Sailors slept in hammocks in the Royal Navy until well into the twentieth century, because a hammock swings with the ship instead of tipping you out. Note that the trees need to be about four metres apart and considerably stronger than people assume.
1nounhammockA hanging bed of cloth or net slung between supports.
“The hammock has been between those two trees since about June.”
hammock is a hanging bed.
Spanish hamaca comes from the Taíno word for the object, one of the first words Europeans took from the Caribbean. Columbus's crew saw them in use and adopted both the bed and the name.
awd-pro
*maka
tnq
*hamaka
Spanish
hamaca
English, today
hammock
Borrowed from Spanish hamaca, from tnq hamaka (compare arw hamaka, guc jama'a), from awd-pro maka. Columbus, in the narrative of his first voyage, says: “A great many Indians in canoes came to the ship to-day for the purpose of bartering their cotton, and hamacas, or nets, in which they sleep.”
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA