fertilize

Etymology

It is formed from English fertile + -ize.^[2][3][4][5] The OED compares French fertiliser (1558), Spanish fertilizar (1454), Portuguese fertilizar (1589) and Italian fertilizzare (before 1686),^[2] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged takes the English verb as probably from the French one,^[6] as Johnson did.^[7] The adjective comes from Old French fertil and directly from Latin fertilis (“bearing in abundance, fruitful”),^[4][8] from ferō (“to bear”),^[4][8] from Proto-Indo-European *bher- (“to carry; to bear children”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

To enrich soil or land so that it grows crops better: in 1610, in W. Folkingham's Feudigraphia, in the OED's revised entry.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates the verb to 1621,^[6] and Etymonline and the Dictionary.com text to the 1640s, as "make fertile".^[4][5]

Semantic evolution

The word began with the land and quickly widened: within five years it could be used figuratively, of making anything more fruitful or richer (1615).^[2] Johnson (1755) still defines it only in the general way, as making fruitful, plenteous or productive, and illustrates it with rainwater enriching the land.^[7] The biological sense, making an egg or seed able to produce a new individual, is older in the OED (1683, in Snape's Anatomy of an Horse)^[2] than in Etymonline, which dates the union with an egg cell to 1859,^[4] and the Shorter Oxford, which puts it in the mid 19th century.^[3]

Timeline

• 1610 – to enrich soil or land.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged has 1621.^[6]
• 1615 – figurative, to make something more productive or richer.^[2]
• 1683 – to make an egg or seed able to produce a new individual.^[2] Etymonline dates the sense to 1859.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To add manure, compost or chemical nutrients to soil or water so that plants grow better: The growers fertilize their orchards every spring.^[9][6][2]
2. To bring sperm or pollen to an egg or plant, so that a new individual can develop: Bees fertilize the blossoms as they feed.^[9][2][3]
3. To make something more productive; to enrich it: Contact with travellers fertilized the town's music.^[9][6][2]

Word family

• fertilizable
• fertilizability
• cross-fertilize
• fertilization
• fertilizer
• overfertilize
• refertilize

Related words

• fertile
• fertility
• bear

Usage notes

It is also spelled fertilise, especially in British English.^[6][9]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins