plant
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: enpr: plănt
ipa: /plænt/
ipa: [pʰl̥ænt]
enpr: plänt
ipa: /plɑːnt/
ipa: [pʰl̥ɑːnt]
ipa: [pʰl̥eənt]
rhymes: -ɑːnt
rhymes: -ænt
Forms: form: plants
form: planting
form: planted
form: planted
Etymology: From Middle English plante, from Old English plante (“young tree or shrub, herb newly planted”), from Proto-West Germanic *plantu, from Latin planta (“sprout, shoot, cutting”). Broader sense of "any vegetable life, vegetation generally" is from Old French plante. Doublet of clan (borrowed through Celtic languages) and planta (directly from Latin).
The verb is from Middle English planten, from Old English plantian (“to plant”), from Latin plantāre, later influenced by Old French planter. Compare also Dutch planten (“to plant”), German pflanzen (“to plant”), Swedish plantera (“to plant”), Icelandic planta (“to plant”).
The factory and machinery senses comes from the Latin sense of "any vegetable production that serves to propagate the species," which refers to something that produces.
Senses: synonyms: seed
glosses: To place (a seed or plant) in soil or other substrate in order that it may live and grow.
examples: text: to plant a garden, an orchard, or a forest
text: His father had given him a little square bed in a corner of the garden, which he had planted with corn two days before.
ref: 1848, Jacob Abbott, “Story I. Labour Lost.—Elky.”, in Rollo at Work: Or, The Way for a Boy to Learn to be Industrious, London: James S. Hodson, page 5:
text: With your mouse, you plant a garden by selecting plants from a database of 450 of the most common flowers, shrubs, and trees.
ref: 1991 November 26, Don Trivette, “How Does Your Garden Grow? With Silver Bells And Mouse Button Clicks”, in PC Mag, volume 10, number 20, Ziff Davis, Inc., →ISSN, page 604:
glosses: To furnish or supply with plants.
examples: text: That gun’s not mine! It was planted there by the real murderer!
text: Not only that, I thought, but cynics would now theorise that the interview piece was a PR exercise, a planted story designed as damage-limitation in the event that some probing journalist revealed all about the love nest.
ref: 1999, Terry Prone, The Skywriter, page 182:
glosses: To place (an object, or sometimes a person), often with the implication of intending deceit.
examples: text: to plant cannon against a fort; to plant a flag; to plant one’s feet on solid ground
text: Plant your feet firmly and give the rope a good tug.
text: First Anelka curled a shot wide from just outside the box, then Lampard planted a header over the bar from Bosingwa's cross.
ref: 2011 January 15, Sam Sheringham, “Chelsea 2 - 0 Blackburn Rovers”, in BBC:
glosses: To place or set something firmly or with conviction.
examples: text: God moves in a myſterious way, / His wonders to perform; / He plants his footſteps in the ſea, / And rides upon the ſtorm.
ref: 1780, William Cowper, “Light Shining out of Darkneſs”, in Twenty-ſix Letters on Religious Subjects […] To which are added Hymns […] , 4th edition, page 252:
text: Sarah, she kissed each of her grandparents on the forehead. They were planted in a graveyard behind the church.
ref: 2007, Richard Laymon, Savage, page 118:
glosses: To place in the ground.
examples: text: It engenders choler, planteth anger.
ref: c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:
glosses: To engender; to generate; to set the germ of.
examples: text: to plant a colony
text: planting of countries like planting of woods
ref: 1625, Francis [Bacon], “Of Plantations”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, →OCLC:
glosses: To furnish with a fixed and organized population; to settle; to establish.
examples: text: to plant Christianity among the heathen
glosses: To introduce and establish the principles or seeds of.
examples: text: We will plant some other in the throne.
ref: c. 1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene vii]:
glosses: To set up; to install; to instate.
Derived terms: faceplant
handplant
interplant
misplant
nonplanted
outplant
overplant
plantable
plant foot
plant out
preplant
replant
underplant
unplant
unplanted
Related terms: plantation