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Added 9 October 2026

yew

/juː/ noun

In Latin: taxus Wiktionary

noun Definition from WordNet 3.1, Princeton University. Pronunciation from Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org. More about yew at Wordnik → Where our words come from →

Wood of a yew; especially the durable fine-grained light brown or red wood of the English yew valued for cabinetwork and archery bows.
Any of numerous evergreen trees or shrubs having red cup-shaped berries and flattened needlelike leaves.

Origin

From Middle English ew, from Old English īw, ēow, [both cognates of Welsh yw (“yews”), Irish eo, Old Irish eó respectively]; although the Old English form was conjectured to be from Proto-West Germanic *īhu, from Proto-Germanic *īhwaz (compare Icelandic ýr), masculine variant of *īwō (compare Dutch ijf, German Eibe), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eyHw-. See also Hittite 𒄑𒂊𒅀𒀭 (eyan, “type of evergreen”), Latgalian īva (“bird cherry”), Lithuanian ievà (“bird cherry”), Russian и́ва (íva, “willow”). Compare typologically Ancient Greek τόξον (tóxon), possibly a cognate of Latin taxus.

From Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org (CC BY-SA)

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