herbaceous

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin herbāceus (“grassy”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from herba (“grass, herb”),^{[2][3][4][5][7]} with the suffix that gives -aceous.^[2][4][6][8] The OED compares French herbacé, of the 16th century.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of plants that form no wood in stem or branches and die down each year: 1646, in Sir T. Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates the word to 1640,^[4] Etymonline to the 1640s^[3] and Dictionary.com to 1640–50.^[6]

Semantic evolution

The Latin word meant "grassy", and English used it from the start for plants that are like herbs in being soft-stemmed, as opposed to tree-like ones.^[2] In 1785, in T. Martyn's translation of Rousseau's letters on botany, it was extended to anything with the texture and colour of an ordinary leaf, especially green flowers or floral organs.^[2] Two other uses of the 18th century did not last: "composed of herbs" (1725) and "feeding on herbs" (1713, in Derham's Physico-Theology).^[2] Johnson (1755) entered the second, quoting Derham, and in 1773 added "perhaps not properly" to it.^[9] The phrase herbaceous border names a garden border of mostly perennial flowering plants.^[8]

Timeline

• 1646 – of plants, not woody, dying down each year.^[2]
• 1713 – feeding on herbs (rare, obsolete).^[2][9]
• 1725 – composed of or containing herbs (rare, obsolete).^[2]
• 1785 – of the texture and colour of a leaf.^[2][8]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of a plant or stem, having little or no woody tissue, and usually dying down at the end of the growing season: The peonies are herbaceous and vanish in winter.^[4][10][2]
2. (botany) Of petals and sepals, green and like a leaf in colour or texture.^[10][4][8]
3. Of or relating to herbs.^[10][4]
4. herbaceous border: a garden border planted mainly with perennial flowering plants.^[8]
5. (obsolete, 1713) Feeding on plants; herbivorous.^[2][9]

Word family

• herbaceously

Related words

• herb
• herbage
• herbal
• herbivorous

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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b c Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins