yew

/ju/

/ju/

Other forms: yews

Use the noun yew when you're talking about the medium-sized evergreen that has flat needles and small red berries.

This ancient and durable tree confirms the theory that the longer you hang around English, the more homophones — words that sound the same though they're spelled differently — you'll pick up. There are several of these in the case of yew. Curious thing is, all four words in English with this pronunciation (yew, ewe, you, and u) appeared before the 12th century. Guess we just like to make the sound.

Definitions of yew

1. noun

   any of numerous evergreen trees or shrubs having red cup-shaped berries and flattened needlelike leaves
   types:

   California nutmeg, Torreya californica, nutmeg-yew

   California evergreen having a fruit resembling a nutmeg but with a strong turpentine flavor

   Torrey tree, Torreya taxifolia, stinking cedar, stinking yew

   rare small evergreen of northern Florida; its glossy green leaves have an unpleasant fetid smell when crushed

   English yew, Old World yew, Taxus baccata

   predominant yew in Europe; extraordinarily long-lived and slow growing; one of the oldest species in the world

   California yew, Pacific yew, Taxus brevifolia, western yew

   small or medium irregularly branched tree of the Pacific coast of North America; yields fine hard close-grained wood

   Japanese yew, Taxus cuspidata

   shrubby hardy evergreen of China and Japan having lustrous dark green foliage; cultivated in the eastern United States

   Florida yew, Taxus floridana

   small bushy yew of northern Florida having spreading branches and very narrow leaves

   Austrotaxus spicata, New Caledonian yew

   large yew native to New Caledonia; cultivated in eastern Australia and New Zealand and Hawaii

   Pseudotaxus chienii, white-berry yew

   yew of southeastern China, differing from the Old World yew in having white berries

   type of:

   conifer, coniferous tree

   any gymnospermous tree or shrub bearing cones
2. noun

   wood of a yew; especially the durable fine-grained light brown or red wood of the English yew valued for cabinetwork and archery bows
   type of:

   wood

   the hard fibrous lignified substance under the bark of trees