mangrove

Etymology

It is apparently borrowed from Spanish mangue (recorded in 1519, of Brazil) or mangle (1526),^[2][3][4] at first in the form “mangrowe”.^[4][2][5] The American Heritage Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Unabridged, Collins and Dictionary.com take it from Portuguese mangue instead,^[6][7][8][9] and the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English from the Portuguese or the Spanish word.^[10][11] The Spanish word is probably from a Cariban or Arawakan language of the West Indies,^[2][3][4] usually named as Taino;^{[6][7][10][11][12]} Klein gives the source as Taíno mangle.^[12] The ending was changed by association with grove,^{[2][10][11][8][3]} and Barnhart thinks the earlier form was influenced by grow;^[4] the early variant “mangrave” is unexplained.^[2] The OED notes that “mangrow” survives in Jamaican dialect, and compares the dialect word man-grown, used of trees deformed by flattening.^[2] Skeat derived the first part from Malay manggi-manggi, the name of the tree,^[13] and Hobson-Jobson cites Crawfurd for this but prefers the Spanish word;^[14] the OED and Weekley take the Malay word as perhaps borrowed from the Portuguese one,^[2][5] and Etymonline finds a Malay origin hard to explain for an American plant at that date.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Any of various tropical trees and shrubs growing in tidal mud: 1613, in S. Jourdan's A Plain Description of the Barmudas, whose quotation plays on the word.^[2][4][7]

Semantic evolution

From 1683 the word, with a distinguishing word, was also given to trees and shrubs of other genera with the same habitat and way of growth,^[2] as in black mangrove.^[7] The spelling in -grove appeared in 1697,^[4] or in the 1690s according to Etymonline.^[3] Hobson-Jobson noted that the mangroves grow in the tidal estuaries of both the Old World and the New, on nearly all the coasts of India and beyond.^[14] From 1867 the word also meant a mangrove forest, and in ecology the tidal salt-marsh community that such forest dominates in the tropics and subtropics.^[2]

Timeline

• 1613 – a tropical tree or shrub of tidal mud.^[2][4][7]
• 1683 – with a distinguishing word, a similar tree of another genus.^[2]
• 1697 – the spelling mangrove.^[4]
• 1867 – a mangrove forest; a tidal community dominated by it.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A tropical evergreen tree or shrub of the genus Rhizophora, growing in tidal mud along coasts and estuaries, whose tangled aerial roots form dense thickets.^[8][7][2]
2. Any of various similar trees or shrubs of other genera, such as Avicennia.^[8][7][2]
3. A forest or swamp of such trees; in ecology, the tidal community they dominate: Mangrove protects the shoreline from storm surges.^[2]

Related words

• grove

Usage notes

In the 19th century mangrove was also a name for the mango fish (1828–90), probably an alteration of mango after the tree's name.^[2][15]

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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e 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 Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
6. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
13. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
14. ^ a b Yule, Henry; Burnell, A. C. (1903), Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, new ed. by William Crooke, London: John Murray
15. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)