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Black Forest

Black Forest

3 3.9
A mountain area in the southwest of Germany with thick woods and famous scenery
  • proper noun
translation icon : Selva Negra
  • The picturesque village lies nestled in the heart of the Black Forest, surrounded by tall, dense trees.
  • the Black Forest in Germany
  • the edge of the Black Forest
  • deep in the Black Forest

Examples

  • I stumbled through the Black Forest for days.

  • Come fall, you'd think you were in the Black Forest instead of suburbia.

    Fiction book (1995)
  • From the Black Forest of Germany.

  • A small town in the Black Forest.

    Fiction book (1999)
  • I'm from the Black Forest.

  • The entire area of the Black Forest is so beautiful, and I love the proximity of that area to Switzerland and France.

    Blog text (7)
  • They accompany him to the Black Forest.

  • This summer I got to spend a few days in Freiburg, a city of 220,000 at the edge of the Black Forest in the southwestern corner of Germany, near the French border.

    Blog text (7)
  • A Gebrüder Weber orchestrion with automata from the Elztalmuseum in Waldkirch, a town in the Black Forest of Germany famous for its music boxes.

    Blog text (20)
  • In the summer, many tourists visit the beautiful hiking trails of the Black Forest in Germany.

Synonyms

Schwarzwald
vsBlack Forest
1 9.1

A hilly area of forests in the southwest of Germany called the Black Forest

is the descriptive label stressing the mountainous, scenic character of that region

Surface Forms

Morphology

Black + forest

The phrase is a straightforward adjective + noun composition: 'black' (dark) + 'forest' (wooded area), so a learner who knows both words can infer it refers to a dark/wooded place. Capitalization signals a proper name for a specific region, and many languages use a literal equivalent (e.g. German Schwarzwald), so the basic meaning is immediately comprehensible even if exact geographic details require extra knowledge.

Etymology

The name Black Forest comes from the many dark fir trees that made the woods look almost 'black' from far away. So black and forest together describe a very shaded, thick wood, which is why the name refers to that famous wooded region in Germany.