agriculture
Americannoun
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the science, art, or occupation concerned with cultivating land, raising crops, and feeding, breeding, and raising livestock; farming.
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the production of crops, livestock, or poultry.
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of agriculture
First recorded in 1425–75; late Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin agrīcultūra, from agrī (genitive singular of ager “field”) + cultūra culture
Explanation
Agriculture describes the practice of growing crops or raising animals. Someone who works as a farmer is in the agriculture industry. The Latin root of agriculture is agri, or "field," plus cultura, "cultivation." Cultivating a piece of land, or planting and growing food plants on it, is largely what agriculture means. Raising animals for meat or milk also falls under the category of agriculture. If we didn't have agriculture, we'd all be running around the woods, picking berries and trying to shoot things.
Vocabulary lists containing agriculture
The Industrial Revolution - Introductory
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Down on the Farm
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The United States
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The approach may also support future developments in medicine, agriculture, electronics, and energy technologies.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 4, 2026
Big-money tycoons have leveraged their fortunes to shape the state with their railroads, mines, newspapers, oil businesses and ranching and agriculture.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 4, 2026
Most broad commodity ETFs are heavily weighted to energy markets, with the rest of the portfolio divided between precious and industrial metals and agriculture.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 3, 2026
The UK and EU have agreed a draft deal on removing post-Brexit checks from food and agriculture exports, ahead of the UK-EU summit later this month.
From BBC ● Nov. 3, 2026
About 4.6 million people came from Mexico to work in agriculture.
From "The First Rule of Punk" by Celia C. Pérez
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
