Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Xeriscape
/ˈzɛrɪskeɪp/noun
Garden design that needs little or no watering beyond rainfall.
The Greek roots
ξηρός
xērós
dry
Literally: “dry landscape”
Follow a root:ξηρός4 words
The story of the word
Denver Water coined the word in 1981, during a drought, for planting that lives on what the sky provides. The front half is ξηρός, dry, the same root behind xerography and so behind the Xerox company name. The back half is not Greek at all: -scape comes from landscape, a word English took from Dutch painters, which makes xeriscape a hybrid built by a municipal utility.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → modern coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1981
Same family
xerophytexerographyxerosiselixir
In a sentence
They tore out the lawn and put in a xeriscape of agave and gravel.
Xeriscape does not mean rocks and cactus, whatever the neighbours assume.