botanize
Americanverb (used without object)
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to study plants or plant life.
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to collect plants for scientific study.
verb (used with object)
verb
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(intr) to collect or study plants
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(tr) to explore and study the plants in (an area or region)
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of botanize
1760–70; < New Latin botanizāre < Greek botanízein to gather plants. See botanist, -ize
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.
See Examples For:
She liked to botanize, collecting specimens of plants along the route.
From National Geographic ● Jul. 2, 2017
He would forbid you newspapers and order you to botanize and prescribe tranquillizing reading; Trollope's novels, the Life of Gladstone, the works of Mr. A. C. Benson, memoirs and so on.
From Soul of a Bishop by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
Bent upon their own factious aims, the combatants have no time to concern themselves with the doings of an English traveller, whose object out there is ostensibly to botanize and shoot.
From The Treasure of the Incas by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty
And De Sauty shall spare them, though he botanize on his mother's grave.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 26, December, 1859 by Various
It was a famous place in which to botanize, and the girls were allowed to disperse and hunt about for specimens, and came back every now and then to show their finds to their teacher.
From The New Girl at St. Chad's A Story of School Life by Angela Brazil
The bursting tree buds looked strangely familiar to those who had botanized among the garnishings of the fish course of a forty-cent dinner.
From Strictly business: more stories of the four million by O. Henry
She botanized, fished, and shot, unheeding her secret admirer.
From The Mysteries of All Nations Rise and Progress of Superstition, Laws Against and Trials of Witches, Ancient and Modern Delusions Together With Strange Customs, Fables, and Tales by James Grant
His father was named Doctor Zoppo, came from Pavia, botanized himself from Italy to Germany, and let the little ones tear yellow flowers along the way.
From The Invisible Lodge by Jean Paul
For eight years he taught school, or botanized, roamed the woods with his gun, worked at the loom, and peddled his verses among the inhabitants of New Jersey.
From Old Trails on the Niagara Frontier by Frank H. Severance
She dressed the house with them, getting help from the garden when necessary; botanized a good deal; and began to grow as knowing in plants almost as Mrs. Caxton herself.
From The Old Helmet, Volume II by Susan Warner
Gardeners will savor stories of 19th century botanizing and appreciate Hosack’s quest to save a garden, the most ephemeral of treasures, for posterity.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 16, 2018
Ray encouraged Willughby’s interests in mathematics and took him botanizing.
From Nature ● May 1, 2018
I might have spent weeks in botanizing merely at them; but all I could remark, or cared to remark, there as in other places, was the tendency in the rastrajo towards growing enormous rounded leaves.
From With the World's Great Travellers, Volume 2 by Various
They passed their days in exploring the forest, then larger and wilder than now, botanizing and butterfly-hunting.
From Famous Women: George Sand by Bertha Thomas
While the others were botanizing high on the mountain side, I went along a beach path toward a group of whitewashed cabins, intent on replenishing the canteen.
From Afloat on the Ohio An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo by Reuben Gold Thwaites
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
