Other forms: sycamores
A sycamore is a broad tree whose winged seeds spin as they fall. A sycamore tree, sycamore seeds, under the sycamore.
The paired winged seeds spin like helicopter blades, which slows them and carries them further — children call them helicopters and the botanical name is samaras. The British sycamore is a maple, introduced centuries ago and now everywhere; the American sycamore is a plane tree, and the biblical sycamore is a fig. Three quite different trees share the name, which is a rare degree of confusion.
1nounsycamoreA broad tree whose winged seeds spin as they fall.
“The sycamore reaches about thirty-five metres.”
sycamore is a tree.
Greek sykomoros means fig-mulberry — sykon, a fig, plus moron, a mulberry. It named a Middle Eastern fig, and Europeans applied it to unrelated trees.
Ancient Greek
σῡκόμορος
Latin
sȳcomorus
Old French
sicamor
Middle English
sicamour
English, today
sycamore
Built from
Circa 1350 as Middle English sicamour, from Old French sicamor, from Latin sȳcomorus, from Ancient Greek σῡκόμορος literally “fig-mulberry”, from σῦκον (“fig”) + μόρον (“mulberry”). Possibly influenced by שִׁקְמָה. In the 16th c. applied to the European maple (Acer pseudoplatanus), in the early 19th c. to various plane tree species introduced to North America, perhaps in analogy to their shadiness.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA