Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Topiary
/ˈtoʊpiɛri/noun
The clipping of hedges and shrubs into geometric or figurative shapes.
The Greek roots
τόπια
tópia
garden scenes, ornamental places
Literally: “little places”
Follow a root:τόπια1 word
The story of the word
A Roman household with money employed a topiarius, the ornamental gardener, and Pliny the Elder credits the invention of the art to Gaius Matius, a friend of Augustus. The Latin came from Greek tópia, the small landscape scenes painted or planted in a garden, a diminutive of tópos, place. English took the adjective in the sixteenth century, well before the great yew birds of the seventeenth-century garden.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
topostopographytopicutopia
In a sentence
Two gardeners spend a fortnight each August on the topiary alone.