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''elm'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260915190735-00-⌔

elm - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

🖼️ ➺

Ulmus minor, an elm.

🖼️ ➺

Asymmetry of leaf (U. rubra)

Noun

elm (countable and uncountable, plural elms)

  • (countable) A tree of the genus Ulmus of the family Ulmaceae, large deciduous trees with alternate stipulate leaves and small apetalous flowers.
    • ✤ Synonym: (dialectal) elven
    • ✤ It was not far from the house; but the ground sank into a depression there, and the ridge of it behind shut out everything except just the roof of the tallest hayrick. As one sat on the sward behind the elm, with the back turned on the rick and nothing in front but the tall elms and the oaks in the other hedge, it was quite easy to fancy it the verge of the prairie with the backwoods close by.1
    • ✤ The village is a dignified place of thatch, half-timbering, box hedges and neat farms, set among elms (though not as many as formerly, since Dutch elm disease took its toll) on the level plain of the Pewsey Vale.2
  • (uncountable, often attributive) Wood from an elm tree.
    • ✤ English soldiers handled sturdy bows of yew, ash, or elm, which could propel an iron-tipped arrow as far as a hundred yards.3

Etymology

From Middle English elme, elm, from Old English elm, from Proto-West Germanic ﹡elm, from Proto-Germanic ﹡elmaz, from Proto-Indo-European ﹡h₁élem (“mountain elm”).

See also dialectal Low German Elm, dialectal German Ilm, archaic German Ilme, Norwegian and Swedish alm; also Irish leamh, Latin ulmus, Albanian ulzë (“maple”).

Pronunciation

  • enPR: ĕlm, IPA: /ɛlm/
  • (dialectal) enPR: ĕləm, IPA: /ˈɛləm/(see ellum)
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -ɛlm

Printed 2026-09-15.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter 1, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC: ↩

  2. 1980, AA Book of English Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 67: ↩

  3. 1999, Robert Lacey, Danny Danziger, The Year 1000: What life was like at the turn of The First Millennium, London: Abacus, published 2000, page 155: ↩

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