sycamore

pronunciation

How to pronounce sycamore in British English: UK [ˈsɪkəmɔ:(r)] word uk audio image

How to pronounce sycamore in American English: US [ˈsɪkəˌmɔr, -ˌmor] word us audio image

Noun:

variably colored and sometimes variegated hard tough elastic wood of a sycamore tree
any of several trees of the genus Platanus having thin pale bark that scales off in small plates and lobed leaves and ball-shaped heads of fruits
Eurasian maple tree with pale gray bark that peels in flakes like that of a sycamore tree; leaves with five ovate lobes yellow in autumn
thick-branched wide-spreading tree of Africa and adjacent southwestern Asia often buttressed with branches rising from near the ground; produces cluster of edible but inferior figs on short leafless twigs; the Biblical sycamore

Word Origin

sycamore: sycamore: [14] The sycamore is etymologically either the ‘fig-mulberry’ or the ‘mulberrymulberry’. The word came via Old French sicamor and Latin sycomorus from Greek sūkómoros. This was a compound based on móron ‘mulberry’, its first element being either Greek súkon ‘fig’ or an adaptation of Hebrew shiqmāh ‘mulberry’. It was originally used in English for a type of fig tree (the sycomores mentioned in the Bible – as in ‘The sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars’, Isaiah 9:10 – are fig trees), and the modern application to a variety of maple did not emerge until the 16th century.=> sycophant

sycamore (n.): mid-14c., sicamour "mulberry-leaved fig tree," from Old French sicamor, sagremore, from Latin sycomorus, from Greek sykomoros "African fig-tree," literally "fig-mulberry," from sykon "fig" (see fig) + moron (see mulberry). But according to many sources this is more likely a folk-etymology of Hebrew shiqmah "mulberry." A Biblical word, originally used for a wide-spreading shade tree with fig-like fruit (Ficus sycomorus) common in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, etc., whose leaves somewhat resemble those of the mulberry; applied in English from 1580s to a large species of European maple (also plane-tree), perhaps because both it and the Biblical tree were notable for their shadiness (the Holy Family took refuge under a sycamore on the flight to Egypt), and from 1814 to the North American shade tree that also is called a buttonwood, which was introduced to Europe from Virginia 1637 by Filius Tradescant). Spelling apparently influenced by sycamine "black mulberry tree," which is from Greek sykcaminos, which also is mentioned in the Bible (Luke xvii:6). For the sake of clarity, some writers have used the more Hellenic sycomore in reference to the Biblical tree.