Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Botany
/ˈbɑtəni/noun
The scientific study of plants.
The Greek roots
βοτάνη
botánē
pasture, fodder, herb
Literally: “the study of fodder”
Follow a root:βοτάνη3 words
The story of the word
Behind βοτάνη sits βόσκω, to graze or put out to feed, so the root sense is grass considered from the animal's point of view. English had the adjective botanic from the 1650s and back-formed the noun a generation later. A herbalist in antiquity was a ῥιζοτόμος, a root-cutter, which describes the work better than any modern label.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1690s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
botanistbotanical
In a sentence
She switched from medicine to botany after one summer cataloguing alpine flowers.