Etymologically
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pollen

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Pronunciation

  • UK: /ˈpɒlən/[1]
  • US: /ˈpɑlən/[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin pollen (“fine flour, fine powder, mill dust”),[2][3][4][5][6] also pollis.[7] The botanical sense follows the New Latin pollen of the botanists:[2][4] the OED finds it first in J. Ray's “Historia Plantarum” (1686), perhaps as a translation of the English powder that Nehemiah Grew had used for it, and then in other botanists before Linnaeus adopted it,[2] while Barnhart and Etymonline credit Linnaeus (1751) with introducing it.[4][3] The Latin word is related to pulvis (“dust”), the source of powder and pulverize,[8][2][9][10] and to polenta (“peeled barley”);[3][4][6][8] it is probably related to Ancient Greek πόλτος (póltos, “porridge, pap”)[3][4][7] and πάλη (pálē, “fine meal”),[4][7][5] and to Lithuanian pelenai (“ashes”).[4][7] Barnhart and Klein derive the group from Proto-Indo-European *pel- (“fine meal, dust”);[4][7] Etymonline calls the ultimate origin uncertain.[3] French has pollen once, in 1562, in the sense "flour", and has had the botanical sense since 1766.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Fine flour or meal; fine powder: 1523, in Lord Berners's translation of Froissart's Chronicles.[2][5][3]

Semantic evolution

In English the word first kept its Latin sense, fine flour or dust;[8][11] Johnson (1755) still defined it, after Bailey, as a fine powder, also a sort of fine bran.[12] The botanical sense, the fine powder made by the anthers of flowering plants, was taken over from the botanists' Latin in the 18th century:[8][11][9] the OED's first record is from 1723, in P. Blair's Pharmaco-botanologia,[2] while Barnhart and Etymonline date it to 1760, in a botany textbook.[4][3] The old sense is now only historical.[2][6] The verb, to pollinate or to sprinkle with pollen, is recorded from 1877, in S. Lanier's Bee.[2][5] In Norfolk dialect a pollen was a hen-roost, and in East Anglia a pollard tree, words of separate origin.[13]

Timeline

  • 1523 – fine flour or meal; fine powder (now historical).[2][3]
  • 1686 – Latin pollen in the botanical sense, in John Ray.[2]
  • 1723 – the powder produced by the anthers of a flower.[2][14]
  • 1751 – Linnaeus adopts the Latin word.[2][4][3]
  • 1760 – the botanical sense, according to Barnhart and Etymonline.[4][3]
  • 1877 – verb, to pollinate.[2][14]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The fine, usually yellow powder produced by the anthers of flowering plants and the male cones of conifers, made of grains that contain the male gametes: The bees came back to the hive heavy with pollen.[15][5][2]
  2. (obsolete, 1523–mid 18th century) Fine flour or meal; fine powder.[2][6][5]

Verb

  1. To pollinate; to cover or sprinkle with pollen.[5][2]

Word family

  • pollenless
  • pollenlike
  • polliniferous
  • sporopollenin
  • polleniferous
  • pollen basket
  • pollen count
  • pollinate
  • pollination
  • powder
  • pulverize
  • polenta
  • poultice

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 f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  6. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ a b c d e Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  8. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  9. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  11. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  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. ^ 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)
  14. ^ a b Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
  15. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins