softwood

nounB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #15,194 of 15,258Too rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

Other forms: softwoods

Softwood is wood from a fast-growing evergreen, light and easy to cut. Softwood boards, cheap softwood, a softwood frame.

The name is misleading, since it refers to the tree's seeds rather than the hardness of the timber, and some softwoods are harder than some hardwoods. Nearly all construction timber is softwood because it grows fast.

Definitions of softwood

1nounsoftwoodWood from a fast-growing evergreen, light and easy to cut.B2+
“The shelves are made of cheap pine softwood, so they dent easily.”

softwood is a wood.

Where it comes from

Soft plus wood, with the distinction resting on the tree's seeds rather than the timber's hardness.

From soft + wood. The term refers to the seed coat, or absence thereof, of the tree's seeds; it does not refer to the degree of softness or hardness of the tree's wood, but it seems to do so and is usually assumed to do so by speakers not well informed about trees and timber.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Materials & Substances

Practise this word

softwood in the wild

The main softwood species (pines, spruces, larches, false tsugas) also have resin canals (or ducts) in their wood.
Softwood
In the United States, softwood lumber lots are primarily privately owned, with the owners holding auctions to determine who has the right to harvest timber.
Canada–United States softwood lumber dispute
Low-density softwoods, such as firs with thin-walled fibres are preferred for papers with high demands for bonding-related strength characteristics.
Pulpwood
Southern bleached softwood kraft (SBSK) is a wood pulp mainly produced in the southern USA.
Southern bleached softwood kraft

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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