Etimology
From Middle English plante, from Old English plante (“young tree or shrub, herb newly planted”), 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. 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”). (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “What is the etymology of the factory (noun 5) and machinery (noun 11) senses?”)
noun
plant (plural plants)
(botany) An organism that is not an animal, especially an organism capable of photosynthesis. Typically a small or herbaceous organism of this kind, rather than a tree.
(botany) An organism of the kingdom Plantae; now specifically, a living organism of the Embryophyta (land plants) or of the Chlorophyta (green algae), a eukaryote that includes double-membraned chloroplasts in its cells containing chlorophyll a and b, or any organism closely related to such an organism.
(ecology) Now specifically, a multicellular eukaryote that includes chloroplasts in its cells, which have a cell wall.
(proscribed as biologically inaccurate) Any creature that grows on soil or similar surfaces, including plants and fungi.
A factory or other industrial or institutional building or facility.
An object placed surreptitiously in order to cause suspicion to fall upon a person.
(slang, obsolete) A stash or cache of hidden goods.
Anyone assigned to behave as a member of the public during a covert operation (as in a police investigation).
A person, placed amongst an audience, whose role is to cause confusion, laughter etc.
(snooker) A play in which the cue ball knocks one (usually red) ball onto another, in order to pot the second; a set.
(uncountable) Machinery, such as the kind used in earthmoving or construction.
(obsolete) A young tree; a sapling; hence, a stick or staff.
(obsolete) The sole of the foot.
(dated, slang) A plan; a swindle; a trick.
An oyster which has been bedded, in distinction from one of natural growth.
(US, dialect) A young oyster suitable for transplanting.
(control theory) The combination of process and actuator.
Examples
The garden had a couple of trees, and a cluster of colourful plants around the border.
In plants, the ability to recognize self from nonself plays an important role in fertilization, because self-fertilization will result in less diverse offspring than fertilization with pollen from another individual. Many genes with reproductive roles also have antibacterial and immune functions, which indicate that the threat of microbial attack on the sperm or egg may be a major influence on rapid evolution during reproduction.
That gun's not mine! It's a plant! I've never seen it before!
O’Sullivan risked a plant that went badly astray, splitting the reds.
Take, Shepherd, take a Plant of ſtubborn Oak; / And labour him with many a ſturdy ſtroke: / Or with hard Stones, demoliſh from afar / His haughty Creſt, the feat of all the War.
Knotty legs, and plants of clay, / Seek for eaſe, or love delay.
It wasn’t a bad plant that of mine, on Fikey, the man accused of forging the Sou’ Westeru Railway debentures—it was only t’ other day—because the reason why? I’ll tell you.
Related words
hypernyms
(biology): Archaeplastida
hyponyms
bottling plant
coaling plant
desalination plant
houseplant
pot plant
power plant
related terms
plant pot
plant room
verb
plant (third-person singular simple present plants, present participle planting, simple past and past participle planted)
(transitive, intransitive) To place (a seed or plant) in soil or other substrate in order that it may live and grow.
(transitive) To furnish or supply with plants.
(transitive) To place (an object, or sometimes a person), often with the implication of intending deceit.
(transitive) To place or set something firmly or with conviction.
(transitive) To place in the ground.
(transitive) To engender; to generate; to set the germ of.
(transitive) To furnish with a fixed and organized population; to settle; to establish.
(transitive) To introduce and establish the principles or seeds of.
(transitive) To set up; to install; to instate.
Examples
to plant a garden, an orchard, or a forest
His father had given him a little square bed in a corner of the garden, which he had planted with corn two days before.
With your mouse, you plant a garden by selecting plants from a database of 450 of the most common flowers, shrubs, and trees.
That gun's not mine! It was planted there by the real murderer!
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.
Plant your feet firmly and give the rope a good tug.
to plant cannon against a fort; to plant a flag; to plant one's feet on solid ground
First Anelka curled a shot wide from just outside the box, then Lampard planted a header over the bar from Bosingwa's cross.
God moves in a myſterious way, / His wonders to perform; / He plants his footſteps in the ſea, / And rides upon the ſtorm.
Sarah, she kissed each of her grandparents on the forehead. They were planted in a graveyard behind the church.
It engenders choler, planteth anger.
to plant a colony
planting of countries like planting of woods
to plant Christianity among the heathen
We will plant some other in the throne.
Related words
related terms
plantation