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hemlock

noun

Simple meaning

Any of the poisonous umbelliferous plants, of the genera.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

hehmlahk

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IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈhɛmlɑk

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. Any of the poisonous umbelliferous plants, of the genera

  2. Poison obtained from these Conium and Cicuta plants.

  3. Conium, either Conium maculatum or Conium chaerophylloides.

  4. Cicuta (water hemlock).

  5. A number of places in the United States

  6. A ghost town in the town of Warner, Clark County, Wisconsin.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
C1 · Advanced (estimated)
Frequency
Uncommon
Formality
Technical

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Any of the poisonous umbelliferous plants, of the genera

Used this way, hemlock is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Nearby words

  • poison hemlock , rarer, so it draws attention

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use hemlock

  • “Socrates refused to flee and died by drinking hemlock.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Poisonous

poison hemlock

Soft / several

hemlock foresthemlock spruce

Cicuta

water hemlock

Large

hemlock societyhemlock tree

Other combinations

mountain hemlockhemlock bark

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • hemlock treenounCompound term

    An evergreen tree.

  • hemlock water dropwortnounCompound term

    European poisonous herb having tuberous roots, yellow juice that stains the skin, yellow flowers and foliage resembling celery.

  • canadian hemlocknounCompound term

    Common forest tree of the eastern United States and Canada.

  • carolina hemlocknounCompound term

    Medium-sized evergreen of southeastern United States having spreading branches and widely diverging cone scales.

  • douglas hemlocknounCompound term

    Lofty douglas fir of northwestern North America having short needles and egg-shaped cones.

  • eastern hemlocknounCompound term

    Common forest tree of the eastern United States and Canada.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: any of the poisonous umbelliferous plants

poison hemlockRare

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.