Agriculture

How to spell agriculture

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce agriculture

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does agriculture mean?

1. nounThe science and practice of cultivating soil, growing crops, and raising livestock.

Agriculture in a sentence

• The region's economy depends heavily on agriculture and exported grain.

• She studied agriculture at university before taking over the family farm.

Where does agriculture come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin agricultura, a compound formed from ager, meaning 'a field' or 'land', and cultura, meaning 'cultivation' or 'tilling', which itself derives from the verb colere, 'to till, tend, or care for'. The Latin sense was straightforwardly practical: the working of the soil to raise crops and animals. English took the word up in the early 1600s, drawing on both the Latin form and its French relative, at a time when scholars were borrowing many learned Latin terms wholesale. The same ager root survives in 'agronomy' and even in 'acre', while the cultura half is the direct ancestor of the everyday words 'culture' and 'cultivate'. The spelling trap sits in the unstressed middle: writers often forget the 'i' in agri- and may stumble over the -culture ending, which echoes the familiar word 'culture'.

How the word is built

• agri- (from ager: field)
• culture (from cultura: cultivation, tilling)