irrigate

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin irrigātus, the past participle of irrigō (“to lead water to, moisten, flood, refresh”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} formed from in- (“in, into”) and rigō (“to water, moisten”).^[2][3][7][8] The earlier Middle English adjective irrigat (“watered, flooded”) has the same Latin source, and Barnhart takes the verb to have developed from it.^[9][10][4] The origin of the Latin verb is uncertain.^[3][4] Barnhart, Klein and Merriam-Webster Unabridged connect it with rain and German Regen,^[4][11][6] and Etymonline reports Watkins's suggestion of Proto-Indo-European *reg- (“moist”).^[3] De Vaan, as Etymonline reports him, looks to the root of regō (“to direct, lead”), which suits the sense better but has phonetic problems, or to that of rigeō (“to be stiff”).^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

To moisten, to wet: 1615, in Crooke's Mikrokosmographia.^[2][6][4] Dictionary.com dates the verb to 1605–15 and Etymonline to the 1610s.^[5][3] The adjective, "watered, flooded", appears in Lydgate's Fabula Duorum Mercatorum, of the land flooded by the Nile.^[2][9]

Semantic evolution

The English verb is first recorded in the general sense of moistening, and the farming sense, supplying land with water through channels, only in Cockeram's dictionary of 1623.^[2][4] It became the main meaning, and the OED notes that the general sense is now rare and felt as a transfer from it.^[2] Johnson (1755) still defined the word as to wet, moisten or water.^[12] The figurative use, to refresh or make fruitful, follows from 1686.^[2] Chiefly American slang made it a word for drinking in 1856, in Phoenixiana;^[2][13] Green's dictionary compares a line of 1708 about irrigating dry tongues.^[13] Medicine took it up for a constant flow of liquid over a wound or part of the body in 1876.^[2]

Timeline

• before 1412 – adjective, watered, flooded.^[2]
• 1615 – verb, to moisten, to wet.^[2][6][4]
• 1623 – to supply land with water through channels.^[2][4]
• 1686 – figurative, to refresh or make fruitful.^[2]
• 1856 – slang, to drink.^[2][13]
• 1876 – in medicine, to supply a wound or part with a constant flow of liquid.^[2]
• 1901 – to cause to percolate.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To supply land or crops with water by artificial means such as canals, ditches or sprinklers: The growers irrigate their olive groves from a reservoir.^[14][6][2]
2. (medicine) To wash a wound or a body part with a flow of liquid.^[14][6][2]
3. To refresh or make fertile, as if by watering.^[14][6][2]
4. (rare) To moisten or wet.^[2][15][6]
5. (slang, chiefly US) To drink, especially something alcoholic.^[2][6][13]

Word family

• irrigation
• irrigational
• irrigator
• nonirrigated
• unirrigated
• irrigable
• overirrigate
• reirrigate

Related words

• rain
• irriguous

References

1. ^ 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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
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 g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b 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)
10. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
11. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ a b c d Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
14. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
15. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press