Other forms: oaks
An oak is a large slow-growing tree whose seed is the acorn. An oak tree, a five-hundred-year-old oak, an avenue of oaks.
Oak is also the hard heavy wood, which is prized for furniture, floors, barrels and, historically, ships. English oak is a national symbol in Britain and appears on coins, badges and the National Trust's logo. Note that oak barrels give whisky and wine much of their flavour, which is why oaked appears on wine labels. And mighty oaks from little acorns grow is one of the best known English proverbs.
1nounoakA large slow-growing tree that produces acorns.
“The oak at the end of the field is older than the house.”
2nounhardThe hard wood of that tree.
“The whole staircase is oak and weighs a ton.”
oak is a tree, or its wood.
Old English ac goes back to a Proto-Indo-European root for the oak that shows up across Europe. It gives the -ock and -ake in a great many English place names, and acorn is the same word plus corn, meaning a grain or seed.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂eyǵ- — oak
Proto-Germanic
*aiks — oak
Proto-West Germanic
*aik
Old English
aac
Middle English
ake
English, today
oak
Built from
Middle English ake, hok, oek, ok, oke, from Old English aac, āc, ǣċ, from Proto-West Germanic aik, from Proto-Germanic aiks (“oak”), from Proto-Indo-European h₂eyǵ- (“oak”). 2 From Proto-Germanic: Scots aik, ake, yik (“oak”), frr iake, iik (“oak”), stq Eeke (“oak”), West Frisian iik (“oak”), cim aicha, oach (“oak”), Dutch eik (“oak”), German Eiche (“oak”), lb Eech (“oak”), wym aach, aeh́, ǡh́ (“oak”), Danish eg (“oak”), Faroese, Icelandic and Norwegian Nynorsk eik (“oak”), Norwegian Bokmål eik, ek (“oak”), Swedish ek (“oak”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA