maple Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun wood of any of various maple trees; especially the hard close-grained wood of the sugar maple; used especially for furniture and flooring
  2. noun any of numerous trees or shrubs of the genus Acer bearing winged seeds in pairs; north temperate zone

WordNet

Ma"ple noun
Etymology
AS. mapolder, mapulder, mapol; akin to Icel. möpurr; cf. OHG. mazzaltra, mazzoltra, G. massholder.
Definitions
  1. (Bot.) A tree of the genus Acer, including about fifty species. A. saccharinum is the rock maple, or sugar maple, from the sap of which sugar is made, in the United States, in great quantities, by evaporation; the red or swamp maple is A. rubrum; the silver maple, A. dasycarpum, having fruit wooly when young; the striped maple, A. Pennsylvanium, called also moosewood. The common maple of Europe is A. campestre, the sycamore maple is A. Pseudo-platanus, and the Norway maple is A. platanoides. ✍ Maple is much used adjectively, or as the first part of a compound; as, maple tree, maple leaf, etc.

Webster 1913