Other forms: hemlocks
Hemlock is a poisonous plant, or a tree of the same name. Poison hemlock, drink hemlock, a hemlock forest.
The European plant is deadly — it killed Socrates, and it looks enough like cow parsley to be genuinely dangerous to foragers. The American hemlock is a conifer, named for a supposed similarity of smell in the crushed leaves, and it is entirely harmless. Note that the two are unrelated and the confusion is purely a naming accident.
1nounhemlockA poisonous plant of the parsley family.
“The shepherd warned us not to touch the hemlock growing by the stream, because it is deadly.”
2nounnorthA North American conifer.
“Tall hemlocks shade the forests along the Pacific coast of Canada.”
hemlock is a plant.
Old English hemlic is of unknown origin. The North American conifer was named by settlers for a resemblance in smell, and has no relation to the poisonous plant.
Old English
hemlīc
Middle English
hemlok
English, today
hemlock
Built from
From Middle English hemlok, hemeluc, from Old English hemlīc, hymlīc and hymlīce (“hemlock, bryony, convolvulus”), of unknown origin. 2 Compare hymele (“hop-vine, hops”), humele (“bryony, widerton, hair moss, gold-hair, morning glory”), Danish - and Swedish humle (“hops”), Icelandic humall (“hops”). Perhaps from xsc, from ira-pro háwHmah (“ephedra; juice”), from Proto-Indo-Iranian sáwHmas from Proto-Indo-European sewh₁- (“to press out, extract”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire