chestnut blight
1
7.6
- noun
- /ˈʧɛstnʌt blaɪt/
- Specialized
:
muerte del castaño
- Scientists are trying to engineer disease resistance into American chestnut trees, which are highly susceptible to chestnut blight.
- fungus called chestnut blight
- disease called chestnut blight
Examples
-
Foresters are especially anxious about the situation because they recall the devastating effects of two earlier infestations: Dutch elm disease and chestnut blight. -- University of California, Davis, press release, July 31.
Academic text (2000) -
In 1904, however, the fungus called chestnut blight was inadvertently imported into the United States with Asian trees.
-
Similarly, the chestnut blight provided little opportunity for blackgum expansion (Whittaker 1956, Mikan et al. 1994).
Academic text (2007) -
Blackgum was not able to prosper in this forest in the wake of the chestnut blight because of growing competition from the faster-growing red maple and birch.
Academic text (2007) -
Today, none lives into maturity due to the fungal disease called chestnut blight, and other species have taken its place.
Synonyms
A disease that kills American chestnut trees by making deep wounds in their bark
A disease that attacks chestnut trees, making sores on the bark and often killing the tree
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a disease affecting chestnut trees' is directly derivable from combining 'chestnut' (the host tree) with 'blight' (a plant disease), so the compound specifies the disease's target. This straightforward noun–noun compositional pattern is common in English (and across languages), so a B1 learner who knows both words would readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Chestnut blight comes from a fungus that made chestnut trees look very sick, with sunken bark and dead branches people called blight. So the name now means the tree 'disease' that often 'kills' American chestnut trees.