propagate

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin propāgātus, the past participle of propāgō (“to multiply plants by layers or slips; to breed; to extend”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from propāgēs (“a layer or slip of a plant; offspring”),^[5][6][7] formed from prō- (“forth”) and the base of pangō (“to fasten, fix”),^[2][3][6][4] from Proto-Indo-European *pag- (“to fasten”).^[3][8] Barnhart takes the English verb as a back-formation from propagation, recorded probably from 1440, or as developed from the earlier adjective of the same spelling, meaning begotten (recorded by the OED from 1543 to 1671).^[4][2] Klein compares prune, to trim vines.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

To produce offspring, or to make a plant or animal reproduce: 1535, in W. Marshall's translation of Marsilius of Padua.^[2][5] Etymonline dates the word to the 1560s and Barnhart to 1570,^[3][4] while the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English place it in late Middle English.^[9][10]

Semantic evolution

The Latin verb was first a gardening word, to set slips or layers of a plant in the ground,^[4][6][11] and the English verb kept the idea of making plants and animals multiply.^[2][3] In the 16th century it also meant to extend or enlarge (1548–1704) and to make something increase in number (from 1591).^[2] The figurative sense of spreading a belief or practice from person to person is recorded from 1554 in the OED;^[2] Barnhart and Etymonline date it to about 1600.^[4][3] The verb was used of passing on disease from about 1589 and of handing down to one's descendants from 1592.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined it first as to continue or spread by generation.^[12] The physical sense of transmitting motion, light, sound or another wave through a medium dates from 1656, in a translation of Hobbes,^[2][4] and the intransitive "to travel, spread" from 1700.^[2]

Timeline

• 1535 – to produce offspring; to make a plant or animal reproduce.^[2][5]
• 1548 – to extend, enlarge, prolong (obsolete by 1704).^[2]
• 1554 – to spread a belief or practice from person to person.^[2] Barnhart and Etymonline date this sense to about 1600.^[4][3]
• c. 1589 – to spread a disease.^[2]
• 1592 – to hand down from one generation to the next.^[2]
• 1601 – intransitive, to breed, multiply.^[2][3]
• 1656 – to transmit motion, light or a wave through a medium.^[2][4]
• 1700 – intransitive, of a wave or the like, to travel, spread.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To make a plant or animal reproduce; to breed: They propagated the roses from cuttings.^[13][5][2]
2. Of plants and animals, to reproduce or multiply.^[13][2]
3. To spread an idea, belief or practice widely; to disseminate: The pamphlets propagated the new doctrine across the region.^[13][5][2]
4. In physics, to transmit a wave, such as sound or light, through a medium, or to travel through one.^[13][2]
5. To pass on characteristics to later generations.^[13][5][2]

Word family

• propagable
• propagative
• propagator
• unpropagated
• propagation

Related words

• propaganda
• pact
• provine
• prune

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 r s t u v w Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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 e Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
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 e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins