vascular

Etymology

It is borrowed from New Latin vāsculāris (“of or relating to vessels or tubes”),^[2][3][4][5] from Latin vāsculum (“a small vessel”), a diminutive of vās (“vessel”),^[4][2][6][7] with the suffix -āris.^[8] It is related to vase and vessel.^[2][9] The OED compares French vasculaire and Italian vasculare.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of plant tissue, consisting of or having tubular vessels: Barnhart and Merriam-Webster date it to 1672–73, in Nehemiah Grew's The Anatomy of Plants,^[2][8] and the OED's first quotation is from the 1682 edition of that work.^[4] Etymonline dates it to the 1670s, in anatomy.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The word began in botany and was soon used in anatomy and physiology: by 1728 Chambers's Cyclopædia used it of vessels that carry fluids in the body.^[4] Johnson (1755) defined it as "consisting of vessels; full of vessels", quoting Arbuthnot on the circulation of the blood.^[10] From 1830 whole plants could be called vascular,^[4] and since 1870 diseases that affect the blood vessels.^[4] In the 20th century the botanical term vascular wilt (1946) named a disease of the plant's vascular system.^[4]

Timeline

• 1672–73 – of plant tissue, consisting of vessels, in Grew.^[2][8]
• 1728 – of the vessels that carry fluids in the body.^[4]
• 1830 – of plants, having a vascular structure.^[4]
• 1870 – affecting the blood vessels.^[4]
• 1946 – vascular wilt, a plant disease.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. In biology and anatomy, relating to or made of vessels that carry fluids such as blood, lymph or sap: the vascular system.^[11][8]
2. Well supplied with blood vessels.^[8][5]
3. In botany, relating to or having xylem and phloem, the tissues that carry water and nutrients: ferns and other vascular plants.^[5][8]
4. Affecting the blood vessels: vascular disease.^[4][8]

Word family

• vascularity
• vascularly
• extravascular
• fibrovascular
• gastrovascular
• hypervascular
• intervascular
• intravascular

Related words

• vase
• vessel
• vasculum
• vaso-

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins