shumack

English

Noun

shumack (plural shumacks)

1. Obsolete spelling of sumac
   • 1708, J[ohn] Oldmixon, “[The History of Virginia.] Of the Climate, the Soil, and Its Productions, as Trees, Seeds, Plants, Roots, Fruits, and Flowers.”, in The British Empire in America, Containing the History of the Discovery, Settlement, Progress and Present State of All the British Colonies, on the Continent and Islands of America. In Two Volumes. […], volume I, London: Printed for John Nicholson […], Benjamin Tooke […], and Richard Parker and Ralph Smith […], →OCLC, page 308:

     Shumack, Chapacour, and the famous Snake-root, ſo much admir'd in England for being a Cordial, and an Antidote in all Peſtilential Diſeases.

   • 1833, J[ames] E[dward] Alexander, chapter IV, in Transatlantic Sketches, Comprising Visits to the Most Interesting Scenes in North and South America, and the West Indies. […] In Two Volumes, volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 82:

     Immediately after leaving the town, on each side of the road, were the purple flowers of the iron-weed and the red shumack, under which the deer love to repose, for it conceals them from their enemies, as the variegated heath did the tartan-clad Highlanders.

   • 1931, Gustav Melby, Light and Shade, St. Paul, Minn.: La Beau Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 70:

     He seemed like a broken reed / On the shore of a marshy lake, / In the fall when the shumacks bleed / 'Mid the withering grass of the brake.