sumac — English Dictionary

Noun

1. Any of various shrubs or small trees of the genus Rhus and certain other genera in Anacardiaceae.

   Usage

   • Uncountable
   • usually

   Examples

   The Rhamnus of Maderaspatan, and the Trifoliate Sumachs from the Coaſt of Africa, are altogether new.

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

   More examples (18)

   In the mean Time, gargle your Throat, and waſh all your Sores, and Ulcers with the ſame warm Liquor, which ought to be made freſh every 2 Days. Beſides all this, you muſt chew the Sumac Root very often, and ſwallow the healing Juice.

   Plant cutings of Myrtles in a bed of light rich earth, obſerving to water and ſhade them until they have taken root; and now you may plant cutings of [...] African Sumaches, and many other exotic plants, which are ſhrubby; [...]

   Often, on descending into the narrow valleys, we found a little spot of cultivation, a garden, or a field hedged round with shumacs, rhododendrons, and azalias, and a cottage covered with roses.

   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.

   A young forest growing up under your windows, and wild sumachs and blackberry vines breaking through into your cellar; sturdy pitch-pines rubbing and creaking against the shingles for want of room, their roots reaching quite under the house.

   Here, be gardens of Hesperian mould, / Recesses rare, temples of birch and fern, / Preserves of light-green Sumac, Ivy thick, / And old stone-fences tottering to their fall, [...]

   Without the wall a birch-tree shows / Its drouped and tasselled head; / Within, a stag-horned sumack grows, / Fern-leafed, with spikes of red.

   They plunged into the narrow path between the tall sumach bushes, and were at once hidden in the gloom.

   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.

   ―a scattering of man-high cedars (sharp cones), antlered sumac.

   There was a Steinway grand piano [...] a cherrywood writing table, and an assortment of floor lamps, table lamps, and "bridge" lamps that sprang up all over the congested inscape like sumac.

   A declaration of the places whence the goods ſubſcribed doe come. [...] Sumack, from Cyprus.

   In dying a Cotton Gown Black. [...] For a gown, take half a pint of ground shumac and put it into a sieve, and place it in a pan; then pour boiling water on it, and let the shumac water run into the pan; then put in your gown, and let it steep for six hours; [...]

   Long continued inability to retain the urine, more especially when associated with old age, is in general an incurable complaint. Benefit may be obtained, however, by the use of such remedies as a strong tea of sumac, aspen poplar, vegetable balsams, spirits of turpentine, and gum myrrh.

   I feel the wool give way / as if six centuries of feet / had worn it back to the hard / earth floor it was made to cover. // Six centuries of Turkish heels / on my spine-dyed back: / madder, genista, sumac— / one skin color in the soil.

   Tannin or tannic acid is a vegetable principle produced from nut-galls, catechu, or cutch, or terra japonica, oak-bark, divi divi, or the pod of the corsalpin coriaria, valonia, or the cup of the acorn from the prickly oak, sumack, cork-tree bark, mimosa, or wattle bark, larch bark, and many other astringent vegetable substances. This vegetable principle is employed in tanning leather.

   A great revolution is about to be witnessed in this tanning and dyeing material. Supplies have commenced to arrive from Virginia, United States, the quality of which is the best that has ever reached Great Britain. [...] In common fairness it must be added, however, that the very worst tests of the American are superior to the best of the Sicilian; this includes not only the sumacs of Virginia, but those of Maryland, Tennessee, &c. [Quoting Alexander Mcrae.]

   [B]y tanned hides or ſkins, or by tanned pieces of hides or ſkins, are meant only ſuch as are tanned in wooſe made of the bark of trees, or ſumack, or whereof the principal ingredients ſhall be ſuch bark, or ſumack; [...]

2. Any of various shrubs or small trees of the genus Rhus and certain other genera in Anacardiaceae. particularly, one of species Rhus coriaria (tanner's sumac)

   Usage

   • Uncountable
   • usually

   Synonyms

   elm-leaved sumacSicilian sumac

   Examples

   .

3. Dried and chopped-up leaves and stems of a plant of the genus Rhus, particularly tanner's sumac (see sense 1), used for dyeing and tanning leather or for medicinal purposes.

   Usage

   • Uncountable
   • usually

4. A sour spice popular in the Eastern Mediterranean, made from the berries of tanner's sumac.

   Usage

   • Uncountable
   • usually

   Examples

   More examples (2)

   The spices used in this bread are zaatar and sumack. [...] Sumack is a spice derived from the berries of a bush that grows wild in all Mediterranean areas. The berries are dried and crushed to form a coarse purple-red powder. It has a sour taste.

   Sumac is a berry from a bush which grows mostly in southern Italy and the Middle East. The berries are dried and crushed to make ground sumac, used in making many foods such as Yaprakh, Kinirmasee (fried artichoke) and salad.

Verb

1. To apply a preparation of sumac to (an object), for example, to a piece of leather to tan it.

   Usage

   • Transitive

   Examples

   More examples (7)

   After this operation, the goods muſt be winched and well planked, or otherwiſe cleaned; they are then, according to the quality of them, to be ſumached, and then ſnitchelled off, and waſhed.

   Then lot 1 will be shumacked first time; that is, passed through a decoction of shumac, then through copperas, and then washed off, and if the decoction of shumac is kept up strong, after being all of them once shumacked they may be dried. [...] If the black liquor and the shumacking were powerful, some of them will shew themselves finished when dry.

   A great variety of Blue Drabs can be dyed by first Sumaching the cotton, and then in another tub add a little Nitrate of Iron or Copperas liquor, and give a few turns.

   For dyeing on cotton, the cloth or yarn is steeped in sumac or tannic acid, dyed in the color, and then may be fixed by tin, or the cloth may be sumaced and mordanted as usual with tin and then dyed.

   Satin calf should be very carefully shaved to get a level substance; also extremely well set, scoured, sumacked, and sleaked out as other calf, but heavier stuffed, keeping the grain free from dubbing, seasoned and blacked as described for satin horse, and finished in the same way. [From the London Tanners' and Curriers' Journal.]

   I must now direct your attention to the goods, which, after having been crabbed in the way described, are brought on to these large jiggers, and the first process is to sumac or impregnate the cloth with any of the substances usually employed which are richest in tannin, after which the goods are saddened, as it is termed, as a rule, with solutions of salts of iron.

   Harness backs, previous to currying are wetted back in cold or tepid water for skiving; they are then thoroughly scoured, grain well cleaned, and re-shaved, or "flatted" on the flesh if necessary. They are then shumaced to brighten the color. Some makers shumac before flatting in drum tumblers.

   After they [calf skins for making shoes] are shaved, scour, flesh, and grain, give them a good sumacing, and let them lie for a day or two.

   More examples (1)

   The leather should then be sumacked in a drum or paddle vat. […] In a paddle vat, sumac the leather two to three hours. Keep it in motion and warm up the liquor when it gets too cool. After sumacking rinse the leather in lukewarm water, and a nice russet is the result, ready for colors or russet.

Noun

1. wood of a sumac

   Broader terms

   wood

2. a shrub or tree of the genus Rhus (usually limited to the non-poisonous members of the genus)

   Synonyms

   sumachshumac

   Broader terms

   shrubbush