Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Ethnobotany
/ˌɛθnoʊˈbɒtəni/noun
The study of how particular peoples use, name and classify plants.
The Greek roots
ἔθνος
éthnos
people, nation
βοτάνη
botánē
pasture, herb
Literally: “the plants of a people”
The story of the word
John Harshberger of the University of Pennsylvania named the field in 1895, having noticed that the plants in an archaeological site tell you about the people as reliably as the potsherds do. βοτάνη in Greek meant fodder, what grazing animals eat, from βόσκειν, to feed; the botanist inherits a word for pasture. Aspirin, quinine and vincristine all reached pharmacology by way of somebody local who already knew.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1895
Same family
ethnographyethnicbotanyethnocentric
In a sentence
Her ethnobotany fieldwork recorded forty plant names that exist in no dictionary.