Canebrake

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A dense growth of tall reeds or cane stalks forming an impenetrable thicket, especially along riverbanks in the southern United States
2. A tangled stand of tall cane plants growing so thickly that it is hard to pass through, often found in wet lowland areas
3. An thick patch of bamboo-like cane, typically in swampy ground, that forms a dense barrier of stalks and foliage

Etymology: A canebrake is a dense thicket of cane, most often the giant cane that grew in thick stands across the American South. The word is a plain compound: "cane" is the tall, hollow-stemmed grass, and "brake" is an older English word for a thicket or a patch of tangled undergrowth, the same word that gives us "bracken" in its sense of a tangle of ferns. Put together, the name describes exactly what it is, a brake made of cane. The image carries real weight in the word's history. Cane grew so thickly in places such as the river bottoms of the Southeast and the lower Mississippi valley that it could block a path entirely, and travellers and settlers came to treat a canebrake as a serious obstacle. The name therefore works as a precise description of a landscape feature rather than a figure of speech.

Synonyms: brake, thicket