Meaning

noun wood of a yew; especially the durable fine-grained light brown or red wood of the English yew valued for cabinetwork and archery bows

noun any of numerous evergreen trees or shrubs having red cup-shaped berries and flattened needlelike leaves

originFrom Middle English ew, from Old English īw, ēow, [both cognates of Welsh yw (“yews”), Irish eo, Old Irish eó respectively]; although the Old English form was conjectured to be from Proto-West Germanic *īhu, from Proto-Germanic *īhwaz (compare Icelandic ýr), masculine variant of *īwō (compare Dutch ijf, German Eibe), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eyHw-. See also Hittite 𒄑𒂊𒅀𒀭 (eyan, “type of…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0