Hazel

How to spell hazel

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hazel

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hazel mean?

1. nounA small shrub or tree bearing edible nuts, or the wood from it.
2. adjectiveOf a light golden-brown colour, especially describing eyes.

Hazel in a sentence

• noun

  A row of hazel grew along the bottom of the garden.

• adjective

  Her passport listed her eyes as hazel rather than brown.

• noun

  The old fence was woven from springy hazel cut each winter.

• adjective

  The boy inherited his mother's warm hazel eyes.

Where does hazel come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Hazel comes from the Old English hæsel, the native name for the shrub that produces hazelnuts, and it traces back through the Proto-Germanic word hasal to an even older root shared with the Latin corylus and with words for the hazel across northern Europe. The original root simply named the tree itself, prized for its flexible wood used in fences, hurdles and walking sticks, and for its edible nuts. The modern eye-colour sense is a later figurative extension: by the sixteenth century English speakers were using hazel to describe a light golden-brown shade, comparing the colour to a ripe hazelnut. The spelling has stayed remarkably stable, but the trap is the unstressed middle syllable, where the soft schwa sound tempts writers toward an 'i' or 'le' ending instead of the plain '-el'. Related Germanic forms survive in the German Hasel and Dutch hazelaar, all pointing back to the same ancient tree.

How the word is built

• hazel (single Old English root, from hæsel: the hazel tree); no separable prefix or suffix