Maple

How to spell maple

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce maple

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does maple mean?

1. nounA broad-leaved tree of northern regions, known for its lobed leaves, hard wood, and sweet sap.

Maple in a sentence

• The old maple in the garden turns bright red every autumn.

• They tapped the maple each spring to collect sap for syrup.

Where does maple come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Maple descends from the Old English mapeltreow or mapuldor, the native Anglo-Saxon name for the tree, where mapul referred to the tree itself and treow simply meant 'tree'. The shorter form maple emerged in Middle English as the redundant 'tree' element fell away, leaving the bare tree-name behind. Related forms appear across the early Germanic languages, which suggests a shared northern European ancestor for this hardy, cold-climate tree. Over centuries the word came to cover not just the tree but its prized hard timber and, especially in North America, the sweet sap boiled down into maple syrup. The quiet spelling trap is the unstressed ending, which sounds like 'pul' but is written -ple, and the single p where some writers are tempted to double it.

How the word is built

• mapul (Old English mapul: maple tree)
• -le (remnant of the old tree-name ending)