plant

noun

Plant — a living thing rooted in place, unable to choose its own ground

Definition

(botany) a living organism lacking the power of locomotion

In depth

A plant is a living organism lacking the power of locomotion, bound by root or stem to the place where it first took hold, drawing its life instead from light, soil, and water rather than movement or pursuit. The word's stillness gives it an entirely different relationship to time and survival than the animal's restless mobility.

Origin

The word traces to Latin planta, originally meaning a sprout or cutting, and ultimately related to planta, the sole of the foot, by way of the act of pressing a cutting into the ground with the foot. That buried connection between 'plant' and 'foot' is a small etymological irony, given that the plant itself, once rooted, can never again use one.

Usage examples

"Every plant in the greenhouse leaned, with patient, imperceptible slowness, toward the southern light."

"She had come to envy the plant's stillness, its refusal to flee from anything, however threatening."

"The botanist could read the soil's entire history in the plant life it had managed to support."

How to use it

Plant functions equally well in clinical botanical writing and in metaphor, where its rootedness often becomes a figure for patience, vulnerability, or stubborn endurance, in deliberate contrast to the animal's capacity for flight or pursuit.