English
plant
Plant comes from Middle English plante, from Old English plante, from Proto-West Germanic *plantu, from Latin planta ‘sprout, shoot’.
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEplanta1‘sprout, shoot, cutting’
- Proto-West Germanicc. 200–500 CE*plantu1‘plant’reconstructed
- Old Englishc. 450–1150plante1‘young tree or shrub’
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500plante1
- Englishearliest quotation c. 1590–1592plant1
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, English plant
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: c. 1590–1592, William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew: “It engenders choler, planteth anger.”.
Lineage
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEplantaWiktionary, English plant‘sprout, shoot, cutting’
- Proto-West Germanicc. 200–500 CE*plantuWiktionary, English plant‘plant’reconstructed
- Old Englishc. 450–1150planteWiktionary, English plant‘young tree or shrub’
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500planteWiktionary, English plant
- Englishearliest quotation c. 1590–1592plantWiktionary, English plant. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: c. 1590–1592, William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew: “It engenders choler, planteth anger.”
The story
Broader sense of "any vegetable life, vegetation generally" is from Old French plante. 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.
Linked words
through Proto-Indo-European *pleh₂k-
launch, peel, plague, lance, fling, plaintive, 11 more
through Latin planta ‘sprout, shoot, cutting’
Today it means
noun An organism that is not an animal, especially an organism capable of photosynthesis, and typically a small or herbaceous organism of this kind, rather than a tree.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “plant”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / Latin planta / plant