plantation

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English plantacioun, also plantacion,^[2][3] borrowed from Latin plantātiō (“a planting”),^{[4][2][3][5][6]} from plantō (“to plant”);^[2][6][7] Barnhart also derives it from Middle French plantation.^[3] The OED takes it as partly from Latin and, in later use, partly formed in English from plant and -ation.^[4] In classical Latin the noun meant propagation from cuttings, as in Pliny, and in post-classical Latin also something planted, a foundation or institution, a nursery, and in British sources from 1624 a colony.^[4] The OED compares Old French plantacion, recorded once at the end of the 12th century, Spanish plantación and Italian piantagione.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Something founded or established, such as an institution or a religion: about 1425, in the Book of the Foundation of Saint Bartholomew's;^[4] Barnhart's first record, from a translation of Chauliac's surgery before 1425, is the foundation or source of the nerves in the brain.^[3] The action of planting seeds follows in about 1429.^[4][3][2]

Semantic evolution

Like the verb plant, the noun was used of people as well as plants:^[8][9] from 1587 it meant the settling of people in a conquered or dominated country, and the colony itself is recorded from 1609, in the records of the Virginia Company.^[4][2] Trench noted that "the Plantations" was once the usual name for England's colonies across the Atlantic, and that Bacon wrote of the Plantation in Ireland;^[9] Weekley adds the Plantation of Ulster and the old name Plantation Office for the Colonial Office.^[8] The Oxford Dictionary of English describes the plantation of Ireland as the settling of English and then Scottish families there in the 16th and 17th centuries under government sponsorship.^[7] The name Providence Plantations, in Rhode Island, is recorded by the 1640s.^[2] The sense of an estate on which cotton, sugar or tobacco is grown, formerly with slave labour, is recorded from 1626 in Virginia,^[4] although Barnhart and Etymonline first find it in Phillips's dictionary of 1706.^[3][2] A planting of trees is recorded from 1669,^[4] and Trench, in 1859, observed that a plantation was by then only of trees, not of men.^[9] From 1956 the word was also used, chiefly by African Americans, of any institution felt to be exploitative or paternalistic;^[4] in Texas prison slang it means a prison.^[10]

Timeline

• c. 1425 – something founded or established (obsolete by 1704).^[4]
• c. 1429 – the action of planting seeds or plants.^[4]
• 1569 – a cultivated bed of growing plants.^[4]
• 1587 – the settling of people in a conquered country; colonization.^[4]
• 1605 – the establishing of a religion or institution.^[4]
• 1609 – a colony.^[4][2]
• 1626 – an estate on which crops such as tobacco are grown.^[4]
• 1655 – to send to the plantations, to penal labour in the colonies.^[4]
• 1669 – an area planted with trees.^[4]
• 1881 – North American, a cultivated oyster bed.^[4]
• 1956 – an exploitative or paternalistic institution.^[4]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A large estate or farm on which crops such as cotton, sugar, coffee or tobacco are grown, formerly often by slave labour.
2. An area planted with trees, especially for commercial use: a pine plantation.
3. (historical) A colony or new settlement.
4. (historical) The settling of people in a conquered country, especially of English and Scottish families in Ireland in the 16th and 17th centuries.
5. (archaic) The act of planting.

Word family

• plantationlike
• replantation

Related words

• plant
• planter
• implant
• transplant
• supplant

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ 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
5. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
9. ^ a b c Trench, Richard Chenevix (1859), A Select Glossary of English Words Used Formerly in Senses Different from Their Present, London: John W. Parker
10. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com