Botanical

How to spell botanical

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce botanical

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does botanical mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to plants or to the scientific study of plants.

Botanical in a sentence

• The gin is flavoured with a blend of botanical extracts.

• She spent the afternoon photographing rare orchids in the botanical garden.

Where does botanical come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek botane, which meant a plant, herb, or pasture grass, and was itself rooted in the verb boskein, meaning 'to feed' or 'to graze'; the link makes sense, since botane was originally the green stuff that animals fed on. From botane the Greeks formed botanikos, an adjective relating to plants, which Latin then borrowed as botanicus. English picked the word up in the mid 1600s, just as the formal study of plants was becoming a recognised science, and it settled into the familiar -ical ending shared by words like 'mechanical' and 'chemical'. The same root still underlies 'botany' and 'botanist', so remembering the single 't' and the 'an' that carries the stress (bo-TAN-i-cal) keeps the spelling on track. There is no doubled consonant here, which is the trap people sometimes expect but never find.

How the word is built

• botan- (from Greek botane: plant, herb, pasture)
• -ical (adjective suffix)