Woodshock

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A pile of cut timber or logs gathered and stood upright together, often in a sheaf-like bundle awaiting use or transport
2. An upright stack of felled wood bundled into a compact heap, typically left to dry in the open air
3. A gathered heap of chopped logs or timber arranged in a standing bundle, much like a sheaf of grain

Etymology: The word "woodshock" is one of several names English speakers gave to a small forest animal, and its story runs through a Native American language before reaching English. It descends from a Cree term, "ocêk" or "otchek," or from the Ojibwe "ojiig," both meaning "fisher" or "marten," a weasel-like woodland carnivore. English speakers took that name in as "wejack" for the marten itself. The name then drifted onto a different animal. Early English-speaking settlers in North America, meeting the groundhog, a stocky rodent with no real connection to the marten, applied the borrowed name to it in error, giving "woodchuck." "Woodshock" appears to be a related English reshaping of the same borrowed term, and it is possibly the source of "woodchuck" itself, though that link is not certain.