Propagation

How to spell propagation

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce propagation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does propagation mean?

1. nounThe action of spreading or transmitting something more widely, such as a signal, an idea, or a disease.
2. nounThe breeding of new plants from seeds, cuttings, or other parent material.

Propagation in a sentence

• The engineers measured the propagation of the radio signal across the valley.

• The nursery specialises in the propagation of roses from softwood cuttings.

• Rapid propagation of the rumour through the office caused real damage.

• Successful propagation of tomatoes begins with healthy parent stock.

Where does propagation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb propagare, which originally belonged to the world of gardening and meant 'to fix slips of a plant in the ground' so that they would take root and multiply. That verb grew from propago, a term for a layered shoot or cutting set down to breed new growth, itself related to pangere, meaning 'to fasten or fix in place'. The Romans extended the idea from breeding plants to breeding offspring and then to spreading anything more widely, and the noun propagatio captured this act of multiplying or extending. English took the word in during the late 1500s, keeping the horticultural sense of raising new plants but soon applying it to the spread of ideas, faith, light, sound, and disease. A handy memory aid is that the single p in each syllable and the soft -gation ending all descend straight from that one Latin root for setting a cutting to grow.

How the word is built

• propag- (from Latin propagare: to multiply plants by layering)
• -ation (noun suffix forming the act or process)