beech: [OE] Like many other tree-names, beech goes back a long way into the past, and is not always what it seems. Among early relatives Latin fāgus meant ‘beech’ (whence the tree’s modern scientific name), but Greek phāgós, for example, referred to an ‘edible oak’. Both come from a hypothetical Indo-European *bhagos, which may be related to Greek phagein ‘eat’ (which enters into a number of English compounds, such as phagocyte [19], literally ‘eating-cell’, geophagy [19], ‘earth-eating’, and sarcophagus).
If this is so, the name may signify etymologically ‘edible tree’, with reference to its nuts, ‘beech mast’. The Old English word bēce’s immediate source was Germanic *bōkjōn, but this was a derivative; the main form bōkō produced words for ‘beech’ in other Germanic languages, such as German buche and Dutch beuk, and it survives in English as the first element of buckwheat [16], so named from its three-sided seeds which look like beech nuts.
It is thought that book may come ultimately from bōk- ‘beech’, on the grounds that early runic inscriptions were carved on beechwood tablets. => book, buckwheat, phagocyte, sarcophagus
beech (n.)
Old English bece "beech," from Proto-Germanic *bokjon (cognates: Old Norse bok, Dutch beuk, Flemish boek, Old High German buohha, German Buche, Middle Dutch boeke "beech"), from PIE root *bhagos "beech tree" (cognate with Greek phegos "oak," Latin fagus "beech;" see fagus).
Formerly with adjectival form beechen. Also see book (n.).
例文
1. The furniture is made of sycamore, beech and leather.
この家具は、シカモ材、ブナ材、革で作られています。
2.They were sitting on the lawn under a large beech tree.
彼らは大きなブナの木の下の芝生に座っている。
3.The worktop is made of solid beech .
操作台は丈夫なブナの木でできている。
4.forests planted with beech
ブナ林
5.Foxworth shivered as the wind rose up and roared through the beech trees.