Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Xerophyte
/ˈzɪərəfaɪt/noun
A plant built to survive where water is scarce or unreliable.
The Greek roots
ξηρός
xērós
dry
φυτόν
phytón
plant, thing grown
Literally: “dry plant”
The story of the word
Cactus spines, the waxed leaves of an olive, and the resurrection plants that dry to a husk and come back after rain are all xerophytes. ξηρός turns up somewhere unexpected: Chester Carlson's copying process used no liquid ink, so it was called xerography, dry writing, and the trademark Xerox followed in 1948. Greek pharmacy also had ξηρίον, a dry powder for dressing wounds, which passed through Arabic into medieval Latin and came out as elixir.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
xerographyelixirepiphytehalophyte
In a sentence
The whole bed is planted with xerophytes, so nobody waters it.
A xerophyte pays for drought tolerance with slow growth.