Transplant

How to spell transplant

10 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce transplant

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does transplant mean?

1. verbTo move something, such as a plant, organ, or person, from one place and establish it in another.
2. nounThe act or result of moving an organ, tissue, or plant to a new place, especially a surgical procedure.

Transplant in a sentence

• verb

  The surgeons worked through the night to transplant a healthy kidney.

• noun

  He has been on the waiting list for a heart transplant for two years.

• verb

  She decided to transplant the young seedlings into larger pots.

• noun

  The hair transplant left a faint scar at the back of his scalp.

Where does transplant come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin transplantare, formed from the prefix trans-, meaning 'across' or 'to another place', and plantare, meaning 'to set in the ground' or 'to plant', which itself derived from planta, a sprout or cutting ready for setting. The literal idea was simply to dig up a growing thing and set it down somewhere new, and that gardening sense is the oldest one in English, recorded from the 1400s after the word passed through Late Latin and Old French. Over the following centuries the meaning broadened from plants to people, so that whole populations could be transplanted from one region to another. The most modern and dramatic shift came in the twentieth century, when surgeons began moving organs and tissue from one body to another, giving us the medical sense we hear most today. The plain 'plant' sitting inside the word is a helpful reminder of the spelling, since it keeps the single straightforward letters with no hidden trap.

How the word is built

• trans- (across, to another place)
• plant (from Latin plantare: to set in the ground)