teak

[ teek ]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA

noun

a large East Indian tree, Tectona grandis, of the verbena family, yielding a hard, durable, resinous, yellowish-brown wood used for shipbuilding, making furniture, etc.
the wood of this tree.
any of various similar trees or woods.

teak

/ tiːk /

a large verbenaceous tree, Tectona grandis, of the East Indies, having white flowers and yielding a valuable dense wood
the hard resinous yellowish-brown wood of this tree, used for furniture making, etc
any of various similar trees or their wood
a brown or yellowish-brown colour

Origin of teak¹

1665–75; earlier teke < Portuguese teca < Malayalam tēkka

Origin of teak¹

C17: from Portuguese teca, from Malayalam tēkka

Here, table, highboy chairs, and screen—mahogany, cherry, teak—looked nervous and disproportioned.

Hilda stabbed a great crisp fallen teak leaf with her parasol, and spent the grimness of this in twirling it.

From under the teak table Umballa drew forth two heavy bags of silver coin.

African teak, let me note, is not teak properly so called, but the timber of the Oldfieldia Africana.

One of the pleasures of being "on the road to Mandalay" was to see the-- "Elephints a-pilin' teak In the sludgy, squdgy creek"

In Siam the elephants are much used in managing the immense rafts of teak trees that are floated down the rivers for export.

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