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graft

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Etymology and origin of the English word graft

Pronunciation

  • UK: /ɡɹɑːft/[1]
  • US: /ɡɹæft/[1]

graft1 shoot, transplanted tissue

Confidence
Established
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
1377 Langland, Piers Plowman (verb graffen)
Borrowed from
Old French grafe via Middle English
Ultimate origin
Ancient Greek γράφω

Etymology

The horticultural and surgical word is an alteration of earlier graff,[2][3][4][5][6] which is inherited from Middle English graffe, also craffe and griffe,[7] borrowed from Old French grafe, also grefe and graife,[2][5][8][3][7] now greffe,[2][5][8] from Late Latin graphium (“stylus”),[2][3][5][9] from Ancient Greek γραφεῖον (grapheîon) or γραφίον (graphíon, “stylus”),[2][5][8][3] from γράφω (gráphō, “to write”).[2][5][3] The French word meant a stylus or pencil, and the shoot used in grafting was named after it because of its similar pointed shape.[2][5][10][8][4] Anglo-Norman greffe, recorded from the early 12th century, meant a stylus, a graft and a writing tablet.[11] The final -t is not fully explained:[3][2] the OED suggests that it came from graft as the past tense and past participle of the verb graff, or from the common confusion of final f and ft, as in draft beside draff,[2][6][12] and Skeat and Barnhart from confusion with the participle graffed.[13][4] The verb was first graffen;[2][4] Barnhart and the American Heritage Dictionary take it as probably grafier (“to graft”),[4][14] although the OED notes that the English verb is recorded earlier than the French one.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

To insert a shoot from one tree into another: the verb graffen is first recorded in 1377, in Langland's Piers Plowman,[2][4] and the noun graffe about 1387, in another version of the poem, figuratively ("the graffe of grace").[7][4] The form graft is recorded from 1483, in the Catholicon Anglicum,[2] or about 1475 according to Barnhart.[4]

Semantic evolution

The figurative sense, to fix one thing in another so that they unite, is recorded from 1531, in Tyndale.[2][3] Ayto notes that the form graff survived into the 19th century;[10] Johnson (1755) entered the noun under both graff and graft.[15] In 16th-century slang, to graft a man was to cuckold him, by fixing the horns on him.[16] The surgical sense, transplanting living tissue from one place or body to another, appears with Darwin in 1868 for the verb[2][3] and in 1871 for the noun.[2][3] Other specialised uses were nautical, covering a ring-bolt with woven cord (about 1860),[2] and American, mending boots with new soles (1859).[2] In Idaho sheep farming a graft was a lamb wearing the skin of a dead lamb, so that the dead lamb's mother would adopt it.[17] In Westmorland dialect graft could mean family or stock.[18]

Timeline

  • 1377 – verb graffen, to insert a shoot into another tree.[2][4]
  • c. 1387 – noun graffe, figurative, in Piers Plowman.[7][4]
  • before 1398 – graffe, a shoot inserted in a stock.[2][7]
  • 1483 – the form graft, noun and verb.[2]
  • 1531 – verb, figurative, to fix firmly in or upon something.[2]
  • 1802 – the place where the scion joins the stock.[2]
  • 1868 – verb, surgery, to transplant tissue.[2][3]
  • 1871 – noun, surgery, transplanted tissue.[2][3]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A shoot or bud (the scion) joined to a growing plant (the stock) so that the two grow together.[19][20][21][2]
  2. A plant produced by such a union.[19][20][21]
  3. The point where the scion joins the stock.[19][20][21][2]
  4. In surgery, a piece of living tissue or an organ transplanted from one part of the body or from a donor.[19][21][2]

Verb

  1. To insert a shoot into another plant so that they grow together: The gardener grafted a pear onto a quince stock.[20][21][2]
  2. To transplant living tissue surgically: Surgeons grafted skin from his thigh onto the burn.[21][2]
  3. To join or attach one thing firmly to another, as if by grafting.[21][2]

Word family

  • allograft
  • autograft
  • engraft
  • graftage
  • heterograft
  • homograft

graft2 corruption; hard work

Confidence
Disputed
First attested
1853 J. Rochfort, Adventures of a Surveyor

Etymology

The slang word for illicit gain, first recorded in American English, and the British slang word for hard work are of uncertain origin.[2][6][19][20][5] The OED and Etymonline take the American sense as perhaps a use of graft "work" (compare job),[2][3] which they take in turn as perhaps a transferred use of a dialect graft, a digging.[2][3][6] The OED derives that word, the depth of earth thrown up by one spade (1620), probably from Old Norse grǫftr (“action of digging”),[2][6] while Etymonline takes it from Middle Dutch graft (“ditch, moat”), from graven (“to dig”), the source of an English graft, a ditch or moat (1644–1737).[3][2] Merriam-Webster and Ayto connect graft "work" instead with a dialect verb graft, to dig, an alteration of grave, to dig,[20][10][22] and Merriam-Webster leaves the corruption sense of unknown origin.[20] Others link the corruption sense with the horticultural graft: Barnhart explains the verb as a figurative use of "insert or fix upon something",[4] Ayto as "something extra, on the side",[10] and the OED mentions the notion of an "excrescence".[2][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Work, especially hard work: 1853, in J. Rochfort's account of his adventures as a surveyor in New Zealand.[2][16][20]

Semantic evolution

The verb graft, to work, is recorded from 1859 in Hotten's slang dictionary, which glosses it "to go to work".[2][16] In the same year an American police paper used go out to graft of criminals planning to work the summer resorts,[16][2] and the corruption sense grew from such use: the verb "to make money by shady means" is from 1859[2][4][20] and the noun, the obtaining of profit by dishonest means, from 1865.[2][4][20][3] Barnhart dates its use for the money so obtained to 1901.[4][23] The phrase "honest graft" is associated with George Washington Plunkitt, a Tammany Hall politician.[24] In British use the word kept the sense of hard, usually physical, work,[16][6][23] and graft also meant a trade or craft (1896).[2] In Lakeland dialect graft meant digging, then hard work of any kind, and facetiously a man's way of making a living.[18]

Timeline

  • 1620 – dialect, the depth of earth thrown up by a spade.[2]
  • 1853 – work, especially hard work.[2][16][20]
  • 1859 – verb, to work, in Hotten.[2][16]
  • 1859 – verb, to make money by dishonest means.[2][4][20]
  • 1865 – noun, the obtaining of profit by dishonest means.[2][4][20]
  • 1896 – a trade, craft.[2]
  • 1901 – money obtained by graft.[4][23]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The dishonest use of one's position, especially in public office, to gain money or advantage, as by bribery; corruption.[20][21][2]
  2. Money or advantage gained in this way.[21][4]
  3. (chiefly British, informal) Hard work: It took years of hard graft to pay off the loan.[6][20][23]

Verb

  1. To obtain money or advantage dishonestly, or to practise graft.[20][21][2]
  2. (chiefly British, informal) To work hard.[6][23][16]

Word family

  • grafter
  • antigraft

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  8. ^ a b c d Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  10. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  11. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
  12. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  13. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  14. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  16. ^ a b c d e f g h Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  17. ^ Cassidy, Frederic G. & Joan Houston Hall (eds.) (1985–2002), Dictionary of American Regional English, vols I–IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
  18. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  19. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  20. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  21. ^ a b c d e f g h i j The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  22. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  23. ^ a b c d e Dalzell, Tom; Victor, Terry, eds. (2013), The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2nd ed., London: Routledge
  24. ^ Popik, Barry, The Big Apple, barrypopik.com, p. "I seen my opportunities and I took 'em" & "Honest graft", 28 January 2006

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Graft.” Etymologically, 31 Oct. 2026, etymologically.com/en/graft. Accessed 31 Oct. 2026.

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