Redwood

How to spell redwood

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce redwood

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does redwood mean?

1. nounA very tall coniferous tree native to California, prized for its durable reddish timber.

Redwood in a sentence

• The hiking trail wound between ancient redwood trunks taller than any building nearby.

• A single redwood can live for well over a thousand years.

Where does redwood come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound formed simply from 'red' and 'wood', and both halves are native Anglo-Saxon words of Germanic origin. 'Red' goes back to Old English 'read', describing the colour, while 'wood' comes from Old English 'wudu', meaning a tree or a forest. The compound was coined in English to describe trees whose timber or bark shows a reddish hue, and by the nineteenth century it had attached firmly to the towering coastal sequoias and giant sequoias of California, famous for their reddish, fire-resistant bark. Because both parts are ordinary words spelled exactly as they sound, the spelling holds no real trap; the only thing to remember is that it is written as one solid word, not two.

How the word is built

• red (the colour)
• wood (timber/tree)