Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Hydroponics
/ˌhaɪdrəˈpɒnɪks/noun
Growing plants in nutrient solution instead of soil.
The Greek roots
ὕδωρ
hýdōr
water
πόνος
pónos
toil, labour
Literally: “water labour”
The story of the word
William Gericke needed a name in 1937 and modelled one on geoponics, the old word for working the earth, so the compound means water labour rather than water culture. His Berkeley tomato vines grew tall enough to need a ladder, which put the method in the newspapers before agricultural scientists had agreed it was serious. Most supermarket basil now grows this way.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1937
Same family
hydranthydrogenaeroponicsgeoponics
In a sentence
The whole lettuce crop comes out of a hydroponics rack in a converted warehouse.