Hickory

How to spell hickory

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hickory

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hickory mean?

1. nounA North American hardwood tree of the walnut family, or the tough, dense timber it yields.

Hickory in a sentence

• The old axe had a handle carved from solid hickory.

• A tall hickory shaded the back corner of the yard each summer.

Where does hickory come from?

Language of origin: Other

Hickory comes from the Native American languages of Virginia, specifically a Powhatan (Algonquian) word recorded by early English colonists as pawcohiccora. That original word did not name the tree at all; it referred to a milky, oily food drink made by pounding the tree's nuts and mixing the paste with water. English settlers in the early 1600s clipped and reshaped the long native term, and by the later 1600s the shortened form had shifted to mean the tree and its tough wood rather than the drink. Because the word was borrowed by ear from a spoken language, its modern spelling is essentially a phonetic guess that stuck, which is why it ends in the slightly unexpected -ory. The same prized, shock-resistant wood later gave its name to tool handles, smoked food, and even the nickname of US president Andrew Jackson, who was called Old Hickory for his toughness.

How the word is built

• hickory (a shortened, anglicised form of the Virginia Algonquian word pawcohiccora; not built from English prefixes or suffixes)