graft

Pronunciation

• UK: /ɡɹɑːft/^[1]
• US: /ɡɹæft/^[1]

graft¹ shoot, transplanted tissue

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

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

Related words

• graff
• graphic
• graphite
• graffito
• grave

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