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Origin and history of oak

oak(n.)

"tree or shrub of the genus Quercus," Middle English oke, from Old English ac "oak tree" and in part from cognate Old Norse eik, both from Proto-Germanic *aiks (source also of Old Saxon and Old Frisian ek, Middle Dutch eike, Dutch eik, Old High German eih, German Eiche, Swedish ek, Danish eg), a word of uncertain origin with no certain cognates outside Germanic.

The usual Indo-European base for "oak" (*deru-) has become Modern English tree (n.). In Greek and Celtic, meanwhile, words for "oak" are from the Indo-European root for "tree." All this probably reflects the importance of the oak, the monarch of the forest, to ancient Indo-Europeans. Likewise, as there were no oaks in Iceland, the Old Norse word eik came to be used by the viking settlers there for "tree" in general.

In English the word is used in Biblical translations to render Hebrew elah (probably usually "terebinth tree") and four other words. The form in Middle English was very uncertain (oc, oek, hokke, ake, eoke, aike, hock, etc.). Oak-gall "excrescence produced by an oak tree in reaction to insects," used in making ink, is by 1712.

Jove's own tree,

That holds the woods in awful sovereignty,

Requires a depth of lodging in the ground ;

High as his topmost boughs to heaven ascend,

So low his roots to hell's dominion tend.

[Dryden, translating Virgil]

Entries linking to oak

tree(n.)

"perennial plant growing from the ground with a self-supporting stem or trunk from which branches grow," Middle English tre, from Old English treo, treow "tree," also "timber, wood, beam, log, stake;" from Proto-Germanic *trewam (source also of Old Frisian tre, Old Saxon trio, Old Norse tre, Gothic triu "tree"), from PIE *drew-o-, suffixed variant form of root *deru- "be firm, solid, steadfast," with specialized senses "wood, tree" and derivatives referring to objects made of wood.

Not found in High German except as the derived word for "tar." For Dutch boom, German Baum, the usual words for "tree," see beam (n.). Middle English also had plural treen, adjective treen (Old English treowen "of a tree, wooden").

The line which divides trees from shrubs is largely arbitrary, and dependent upon habit rather than size, the tree having a single trunk usually unbranched for some distance above the ground, while a shrub has usually several stems from the same root and each without a proper trunk. [Century Dictionary]

In early figurative use often of the trees in the Garden of Eden or the Tree of Life. In Old English and Middle English also mechanically, "thing made of pieces or frames of wood," especially the cross of the Crucifixion and later a gallows (such as Tyburn tree, the famous gallows outside London). The meaning "framework of a saddle" is from 1530s. A tree-nail (Middle English) was a wooden peg or pin used in ship-building.

The meaning "representation of familial relationships in the form of a tree" is from c. 1300. Tree-hugger, contemptuous for "environmentalist" is attested by 1989.