Oak

How to spell oak

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce oak

What does oak mean?

1. nounA large, long-lived deciduous tree that produces acorns, or the hard wood obtained from it.

Oak in a sentence

• A mature oak stood at the edge of the field, shading the whole garden.

• The dining table was made of solid oak and weighed a tonne.

Where does oak come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Oak comes straight from the Old English word ac, which simply named the oak tree and its hard, durable wood. That word traces back to a shared Germanic ancestor, seen in the modern Dutch eik and German Eiche, all describing the same broad family of trees. Because the oak was so central to building, shipbuilding, and even feeding livestock with its acorns, the word has stayed remarkably stable in form and meaning for well over a thousand years. The related word acorn was originally tied to the idea of the fruit of the open land or forest rather than specifically the oak's nut, and only later attached firmly to the oak through everyday association. The simple three-letter spelling preserves the old vowel sound, with the silent pairing 'oa' doing the work that the long Old English vowel once did.

How the word is built

• oak (from Old English ac: oak tree); a single, indivisible native root with no prefix or suffix