An alternate spelling of champac; a tropical Asian tree with fragrant yellow flowers used for ornamental purposes and wood products.
Variant spelling of champac, from Malay cempaka. Different European languages adopted slightly different spellings when transliterating Malay, so champaca and champac became competing English forms.
The spelling 'champaca' vs. 'champac' is an accident of history—Portuguese traders who encountered the tree first used one spelling, while English traders learned it differently, and both stuck around in English like linguistic echoes of colonial trade routes!
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