Homegrown

How to spell homegrown

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce homegrown

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does homegrown mean?

1. adjectiveCultivated or raised in one's own garden or country rather than bought or imported.
2. adjectiveOriginating or developed within a particular country, region, or organisation rather than imported from elsewhere.

Homegrown in a sentence

• The salad used homegrown tomatoes from the back garden.

• The club prefers to field homegrown players from its own academy.

• She sold jars of homegrown honey at the weekend market.

• The festival celebrates homegrown music from local bands.

Where does homegrown come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound, formed by joining the native Old English word 'home' (originally 'ham', meaning a dwelling or village) with 'grown', the past participle of the verb 'grow' (from Old English 'growan', meaning to flourish or increase). Both halves are firmly Germanic, descending from the everyday vocabulary of Anglo-Saxon England rather than from any borrowed Latin or French source. The literal sense, describing produce raised in one's own garden rather than bought in, is recorded from the eighteenth century. From there it spread naturally to a figurative use meaning locally produced or domestically developed, as in homegrown talent, and that broader meaning has flourished especially since the twentieth century. Because it is simply 'home' plus 'grown' run together, the spelling holds no real surprises once you see the two familiar words inside it.

How the word is built

• home (the dwelling, one's own place)
• grown (past participle of grow)