Definition of "hemlocky"

10 is bad in the south line, and 9 also is cold and hemlocky.

1796, Benjamin Wright, field book; quoted in Franklin B[enjamin] Hough, A History of Jefferson County in the State of New York, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Albany, N.Y.: Joel Munsell, […]; Watertown, N.Y.: Sterling & Riddell, 1854, page 68

The friends of Mr. Fillmore erected a hemlock pole at Evans on Friday last and hung their flag at half-mast. All right—a sign of distress is exceedingly appropriate for that party. Several speakers were present, we understand, and the style of oratory, was, in its argument and positions, quite as hemlocky as the pole, and as distressed as the flag at half-mast.

1856 August 25, Buffalo Morning Express and Daily Democracy, volume XI, number 3286, Buffalo, N.Y., page , column 1

The next section extending from the 18th mile to Mr. Bell’s line, the land on the east side of the line is the same as the last section, but on the west side, the the[sic] land is more hilly, stony and hemlocky.

1858, Directory of the United Counties of Peterborough & Victoria for 1858. […], Peterborough: […] T. & R. White, […], page 50

The rest of the farm is either low and flat, or piny or hemlocky, or something else.

1868 May 1, “[The Field.] “Bush” and “Clearing.””, in The Canada Farmer, volume V, number 9, Toronto, Ont., page 130, column 1

E. G. R. [The Rev. E. Gillett of Runham] in Notes and Queries, iii., Series 1, p. 236, thinks this “Bunkey” or Hemlocky Hill.

1880, Walter Rye, editor, The Norfolk Antiquarian Miscellany, volume II, part I, Norwich: A[gas] H. Goose and Co. […], page 307

From June till October I cruised and camped, mildly, on the upper waters of the Susquehanna, getting such benefit as I might from out-door life in a piny, hemlocky region.

1885 March 12, Nessmuk [pseudonym; George Washington Sears], “The Bucktail in Florida”, in Forest and Stream. […], volume XXIV, number 7, New York, N.Y.: […] [T]he Forest and Stream Publishing Company, page 124, column 1

Such has been the demand in the east for the true-to-nature productions of Becket & Von Hillern that few, if any, have strayed west of the Alleghanies yet; but if in the near future you see a particularly woodsy, hemlocky, viney bit of painting on exhibition anywhere—one that has a tendency to make you want to rush on to Devil’s lake, Shawno, Lake Gobebic, or some other place as yet unmarred by the hand of man—a scene that carries you back to boyhood when you went bare-footed, stubbed your toes, had stone-bruises, and got walloped for going in swimming so constantly—just look in the lower corner and see if you don’t find the initials “M. J. C. B.” or “B v. H.”

1885 August 22, “A Pair of Wood-Nymphs. [Peck’s Sun.]”, in The Arkansaw Traveler, volume 7, number 13, Little Rock, Ark., page , column 3

The snow falls upon them and through them, yet does not lodge and cling to the bared branches; while the pines, spruces and hemlocks are glorified by it. They which have no blossoms in summer are compensated with a wealth of white roses and chrysanthemums, lifted high in air or leaning upon each other. Many a young hemlocky Santa Claus bends under the weight of his gifts, which he drops upon our heads as we pass by; […]

1899 December, John Albee, “My Farm in Winter”, in New England Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly, new series, volume XXI, number 4, Boston, Mass.: Warren F. Kellogg, […], published 1900, pages 476–477

But I see she didn’t care anything about him, and I didn’t blame her; good land! I thought to myself I could easier git up a sentimental attachment to a good new telegraph pole, for that would be kinder fresh and hemlocky.

1909, Marietta Holley, chapter VII, in Samantha on Children’s Rights, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] W[ellington] Dillingham Company, page 116

Who asked you to come in, / Mud-yellow tributary? / I was supple and thin; / And you on the left snow cold / From caves of a hemlocky Catskill hold?— / Forgive the query; it pains to grow.

1934, Frederic Brush, “Susquehanna”, in Crooked River, Philadelphia, Pa.: David McKay Company, […], page 9

West coast fir I can take or leave alone. I can’t say I care for the smell of hemlock or for hemlock at all for that matter, maybe because if you axe yourself just a trifle with a hemlocky axe you are almost bound to get a big fester.

1960 August 8, William M. Clark, “Some Logrolling: Flower Garden Has Its Satisfactions”, in Waterville Morning Sentinel, volume 57, number 134, Waterville, Me., page 4

FOR SALE—A tiny stream, hemlocky woods. 75 acres teeming with game.

1968 October 9, “Classified Advertising”, in The Potter Enterprise, 94th year, number 27, Coudersport, Pa., page seven, column 2

Here we recognise the dreary, dank, desolate, overgrown, hemlocky complex at once.

1969, John Jones, “To Ripen or to Wither?”, in John Keats’s Dream of Truth, New York, N.Y.: Barnes & Noble, Inc., section IV (Havens of Intenseness), page 178

CABIN in the wildwood. 3 rooms, 8 hemlocky acres, dirt road, private.

1976 August 29, The Hartford Courant, Hartford, Conn., page 30B, column 7

Outside, the long facade of white-painted brick / dormer windows tall french doors and trellised verandah / overlooking two levels of lawn and flowerbed / (tigering pansies, poppies with silk lips and milk that taught me bitter) / apple trees enough to feed me and a carnival of wasps into October / off to one side a shadowcopse of elm and beech and a hemlocky meadow / in summer humming as deep as Asia

1997, Adam Cornford, Decision Forest, Berkeley, Calif.: Pantograph Press, page 6

As I was trudging blindly through hemlocky underbrush, hoping to find the deer and go home in time to still be a good host, I heard it.

2003 December 6, Isaac Kimball, “A hunter’s luck, albeit delayed: Quest for partridge fulfilled”, in Bangor Daily News, volume 115, number 147, Bangor, Me.: Bangor Publishing Co., page D7, column 5

So, in this hemlocky wonderland I stumbled upon (literally) huge shiny red shelf fungi, some wrapped around fallen hemlock trunks, some sticking up from a stalk.

2020 April 14, Susan Pike, “These shiny red shelf fungi grow wherever hemlocks are found”, in Foster’s Daily Democrat‎, Dover, N.H., archived from the original on 2023-11-08