Etymologically
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growth

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Pronunciation

  • IPA: UK /ɡrəʊθ/, US /ɡroʊθ/[1]

Etymology

It is formed from English grow + -th, on the model of health and stealth.[2][3] Merriam-Webster derives it from Middle English (Scots) grouth, from Old Norse grōthr or grōthi, from grōa (“to grow”).[4] Etymonline compares Old Norse groði.[2] Old English used grōwnes, “increase, prosperity”.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

“A stage in growing; size or stature reached by growing”: 1557,[5][4] or the 1550s;[2] SOED dates the word to late Middle English.[3]

Semantic evolution

“That which has grown, produce” is from 1580,[5][2] and the action or process of growing from 1587[5] or the 1580s.[2] A wine or vineyard of a certain growth is from 1657,[5] and the French classification of vineyards by growths from 1707.[5] An abnormal growth in the body, a tumour, is from 1847,[5] and growth in economics, of output or income, from 1952.[5]

Timeline

  • 1557 – size reached by growing.[5]
  • 1580 – that which has grown.[5]
  • 1587 – the process of growing.[5]
  • 1707 – a growth of wine.[5]
  • 1847 – a morbid formation.[5]
  • 1952 – economic growth.[5]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. The process of growing; development.
  2. An increase in size, number, value or strength; expansion.
  3. Something that grows or has grown: a growth of weeds.
  4. An abnormal mass of tissue, such as a tumour.
  5. (economics) An increase in a country's economic output or income.

Word family

  • growthy
  • outgrowth
  • overgrowth
  • undergrowth
  • old-growth
  • aftergrowth
  • antigrowth
  • ingrowth

Usage notes

In Scots growth was also an excrescence on the body, and in Banffshire growth o' the sea was a swell.[6]

References

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  3. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  4. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ 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)