tree

This is one of those wonderfully ancient words that started out meaning something like “solid, firm, sturdy,” which is exactly what a tree looks like when you stand under one and feel tiny. Latin and Greek went their own ways, but the Germanic branch kept the old wood-and-strength idea alive in tree, wood, and even truth and trust — yes, loyalty and timber are distant cousins. Old English could use trēo for a tree, a beam, a log, even the cross of the Crucifixion, so the same word could mean a living oak or a rough wooden instrument of punishment. That’s why old Londoners could say Tyburn tree for the gallows, a grim image that turned a noble plant into something much darker. The competing etymological path goes through an old *drew-o- form, but either way the family resemblance is clear: a tree was, above all, the thing that refused to wobble.