hemlock

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English hemlok, also hemeluc and humlok,^[2][3][4][5] inherited from Old English hymlic, also hemlic and the weak feminine hymlice, with an early form hymblice.^{[6][7][8][9][10]} Barnhart dates hemlic to about 1000 and hymblice to about 700, and finds the word in the place name “Humbelochclaile” before 1200.^[7] The OED takes the forms with the vowel y as the original ones and those with e as Kentish,^[6][8][11] while Liberman sees the two as related by ablaut.^[12] The second syllable was altered to its present form in the 15th century, as in charlock.^[13][14] The further origin is unknown: the OED finds no cognate in the other languages.^{[6][15][13][8]} Skeat and Partridge took the second syllable as the Old English suffix -līc (“-like”).^[4][5] Barnhart and Merriam-Webster Unabridged connect the word, with a “perhaps”, with hymele (“hop plant”), akin to Middle Low German homele and Old Norse humli, all probably from a Finno-Ugric word like Finnish humala (“hop”);^[2][7] Liberman traces this idea to Holthausen and rejects it.^[12] He connects the root instead with Low German Hemer (“hellebore”) and Old High German hemera, whose Slavic and Baltic cognates point to a meaning “poison, sickness, injury”, with a plant-name suffix like those of German Schierling (“hemlock”) and Old English īfig (“ivy”).^[12][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The poisonous plant: about 700, when Old English hymblicæ glosses Latin cicūta in the Épinal Glossary.^[12][7][6]

Semantic evolution

Old English medical recipes use the plant in salves.^[9] In Middle English the ending -luc is found by 1265, and hem(e)lok by 1400, according to Liberman.^[12] As the name of the poison made from the plant, the word dates from about 1600;^[8] the OED's first record is Holland's translation of Pliny (1601), and it notes that this was believed to be the poison with which Socrates was put to death.^[6] Johnson (1755) described hemlock as a herb sometimes used in medicine, though harmful, and added that the hemlock of the ancients was generally thought to be a different plant.^[16] In country use the name was given to the large umbelliferous plants in general, in southern Scotland especially to Angelica sylvestris and Heracleum sphondylium;^[6] the English Dialect Dictionary records it for cow parsley and the cow parsnip, and forms such as humlock, humlick and homlick across Scotland, northern England, Lincolnshire and East Anglia.^[17] In New England the name was given by the 1670s to a North American conifer, because the position and fineness of its leaves resemble those of the plant.^[8][6] The verb, to poison with hemlock, is first recorded in Thackeray in 1846.^[6][7]

Timeline

• c. 700 – hymblicæ, the poisonous plant, in the Épinal Glossary.^[12][7][6]
• c. 1000 – hemlic.^[7][12]
• before 1325 – Middle English hemeloc.^[7]
• 1601 – a poisonous drink made from the plant.^[6] Etymonline dates this use to about 1600.^[8]
• 1670s – a North American coniferous tree.^[8] The OED's first record is from 1728, in Boston town records.^[6]
• 1764 – with qualifying words, other umbelliferous plants with finely divided leaves.^[6]
• 1846 – verb, to poison with hemlock.^[6][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. A highly poisonous Eurasian umbelliferous plant (Conium maculatum) with spotted stems, finely divided leaves and small white flowers, called poison hemlock in the US.^{[18][2][6][14]}
2. Any of several similar poisonous plants, such as the water hemlock.^[2][18][6]
3. A poisonous drug or drink made from the plant.^[18][2][6]
4. Any coniferous tree of the genus Tsuga, also called hemlock spruce.^[18][2][6]
5. The soft, light wood of such a tree.^[2]

Verb

1. To poison with hemlock.^[6][7]

Word family

• ground hemlock

Related words

• charlock

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
4. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
10. ^ Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
11. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
12. ^ a b c d e f g Liberman, Anatoly (2008), An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
13. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
14. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
16. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
17. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
18. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins