Thu"ja (?), n. [NL., from Gr. an African tree with sweet-smelling wood.] Bot.
A genus of evergreen trees, thickly branched, remarkable for the distichous arrangement of their branches, and having scalelike, closely imbricated, or compressed leaves.
[Written also
thuya.] See
Thyine wood.
⇒ Thuja occidentalis is the Arbor vitae of the Eastern and Northern United States. T. gigantea of North-waetern America is a very large tree, there called red cedar, and canoe cedar, and furnishes a useful timber.
<-- thuja oil. cedar leaf oil.
thujone. n. An oil, C10H16O, the chief constituent of cedar leaf oil. A stimulant similar to camphor. Also called thujol, thuyol, absinthol, thuyone, tanacetol, tanacetone. [Stedman 25]-->
© Webster 1913.