Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Graft
/ɡræft/noun
A shoot joined onto another plant so the two grow as one, or living tissue transplanted into a body.
The Greek roots
γραφεῖον
grapheîon
stylus, writing tool
γράφειν
gráphein
to scratch, write
Literally: “stylus”
The story of the word
A scion cut for grafting is a thin pointed slip, and that is what mediaeval gardeners named it after: Latin graphium, a writing stylus, straight out of Greek γραφεῖον. English graff then picked up a stray final t, the way against did, and became graft. The bribery sense is separate American slang from the 19th century and its origin is unsettled.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 15th century
Same family
graphgraphiteepigraphparagraph
In a sentence
Every commercial apple tree is a graft: the fruit on top, the rootstock underneath.