transplant

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English transplaunten, borrowed from Late Latin trānsplantō (“to plant again in another place”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} formed from Latin trāns (“across”), the source of trans-, and plantō (“to plant”), the source of plant.^[4][2][7][8] Barnhart and the American Heritage Dictionary also take it through transplanter,^[9][2] which the OED dates only to the 16th century.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

To dig up a plant and set it in another place or soil: about 1440, in the translation of Palladius on husbandry,^[3][9] the mid-15th century in Etymonline,^[4] and 1400–50 in Dictionary.com.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The verb was extended to people in 1555, to move a person or a colony from one country to settle in another,^[3][9][4] and Johnson (1755) quoted a use of it for emigrants to the plantations.^[11] The intransitive sense, to emigrate, is recorded from 1608 but is obsolete.^[3][4] In surgery it has meant to transfer an organ or tissue from one part of the body, or from one body, to another since 1786.^[3][9][4] The noun is recorded from 1756, of a transplanted seedling,^[3][4][7] and in surgery for the operation from 1951;^[3][4] Etymonline notes that it came into wide use after Christiaan Barnard's heart transplant in 1967.^[4] In American use a transplant is also a person living somewhere other than their native place (1961).^[3][7]

Timeline

• c1440 – to replant elsewhere.^[3][9]
• 1555 – to move people to settle in another place.^[3][9]
• 1608 – (obsolete) to emigrate.^[3]
• 1756 – noun, a transplanted seedling.^[3][7]
• 1786 – (surgery) to transfer an organ or tissue.^[3][9]
• 1951 – noun, a transplant operation.^[3]
• 1961 – (US) a person living away from their native place.^[3]

Modern meaning

Verb

1. To dig up a plant and replant it somewhere else.
2. (surgery) To transfer an organ or tissue from one body, or one part of the body, to another.
3. To move a person or group to live in another place: The firm transplanted its whole staff to Leeds.
4. Of a plant, to survive being moved.

Noun

1. (surgery) An operation in which an organ or tissue is transplanted; also, the organ or tissue itself: a kidney transplant.
2. A plant that has been transplanted.
3. (US) A person who has moved to a place from elsewhere: a New York transplant living in Denver.

Word family

• transplantable
• transplantation
• transplanter
• transplantability
• retransplant
• untransplanted
• homotransplant
• transplantee

Related words

• plant
• implant
• supplant

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.