Horticultural

How to spell horticultural

13 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce horticultural

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does horticultural mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the cultivation of gardens, plants, fruit, and vegetables.

Horticultural in a sentence

• The local horticultural society holds an annual flower show.

• She studied horticultural science before opening her nursery.

Where does horticultural come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grew out of the noun horticulture, which English assembled in the middle of the 1600s from two Latin pieces: hortus, meaning 'garden', and cultura, meaning 'cultivation' or 'tending', itself from the verb colere, 'to till, tend, or care for'. The model was clearly the older word agriculture, which pairs the same cultura with ager, meaning 'field', so horticulture neatly marked off garden cultivation from field cultivation. The adjective horticultural followed soon after by adding the ordinary ending -al. The hortus root is a quiet relative of the everyday word 'yard' and of 'orchard', and the same colere that gives the 'cult' here also lies behind 'culture', 'cultivate', and even 'colony'. For spelling, it helps to picture the buried word 'culture' inside it, since the tricky stretch is the unstressed 'cul-tur-al' middle where the vowels blur.

How the word is built

• horti- (from Latin hortus: garden)
• cult (from colere: to cultivate, tend)
• -ur(e) (noun-forming)
• -al (adjective suffix)