durmast oak

English

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durmast oak

Etymology

Superficially a compound of durmast +‎ oak, but the origin of durmast is unclear and possibly a result of scribal error. The first edition Oxford English Dictionary suggests that Thomas Martyn's dictionary for gardeners and botanists (1798) originated the word through misreading dun mast ("light-brown acorn"), an interpretation also suggested by some earlier works going back to at least 1836,^[1] although a connection to Welsh derw (“oaks”) has also been suggested.^[2]

Noun

durmast oak (countable and uncountable, plural durmast oaks)

A tree, Quercus petraea, the sessile oak.
Wood of the tree.

References

durmast, n. Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.
Thomas Martyn, Philip Miller (1798) A companion to the gardener's and botanists' dictionary ... By the late Philip Miller, F. and C. Rivington, →OCLC

^ John Claudius Loudon, The Gardener's Magazine and Register of Rural and Domestic Improvement (1836), page 83: "What is called the durmast oak is merely a variety which produces mast or acorns of a dun colour."
^ Britten, J., A Dictionary of English Plant-names, for the English Dialect Society, Trübner & Company, (1886), page 357: "'Durmast (quasi dunmast) oak, the acorns being sometimes of a reddish or dun colour.' Phyt. iii. 882, o.s. We should rather suspect some connection with the Celtic derw, an oak, and mast, a name for its fruit.

[1] John Claudius Loudon, The Gardener's Magazine and Register of Rural and Domestic Improvement (1836), page 83: "What is called the durmast oak is merely a variety which produces mast or acorns of a dun colour."

[2] Britten, J., A Dictionary of English Plant-names, for the English Dialect Society, Trübner & Company, (1886), page 357: "'Durmast (quasi dunmast) oak, the acorns being sometimes of a reddish or dun colour.' Phyt. iii. 882, o.s. We should rather suspect some connection with the Celtic derw, an oak, and mast, a name for its fruit.

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