botanize
Americanverb (used without object)
-
to study plants or plant life.
-
to collect plants for scientific study.
verb (used with object)
verb
-
(intr) to collect or study plants
-
(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
Flowers knew how to preach divinity before men knew how to dissect and botanize them.—H.N.
From Many Thoughts of Many Minds A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age by Louis Klopsch
We have lost only one of our number since we came—namely, Diggory, the market-gardener, from Glasgow, who went out one morning to botanize, and never came back.
From The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 14, No. 402, Supplementary Number (1829) by Various
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
One, all eyes, Philosopher! a fingering slave, One that would peep and botanize Upon his mother's grave?
From Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Volume 2 by William Wordsworth
In these walks young master botanized and geologized his own father, and Sir Charles gave him a little politics, history, and English poetry, in return.
From A Terrible Temptation A Story of To-Day by Charles Reade
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
They had talked, and walked, and botanized together in the wood, in spite of Miss Rylance; and Urania felt somehow that the day had been a failure.
From The Golden Calf by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon
On we came, to the top of the Great Schiedich, where H. and W. botanized, while I slept.
From Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, Volume 2 by Harriet Beecher Stowe
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
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
Here he would be botanizing in a patch of green that relieved the gray of the granite, there he was dodging in and out of the blue crevasses of the upper glacial falls.
From Alaska Days with John Muir by Samual Hall Young
Young and Petersen shot some brent geese; Walker saw two deer, but he was botanizing, and had no gun; others were seen by some of the men, and followed, but without success.
From In the Arctic Seas A Narrative of the Discovery of the Fate of Sir John Franklin and his Companions by Francis Leopold McClintock
I did my best to fancy that she was botanizing or "bouquet" gathering; but no, the stubborn fact would not be denied.
From The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. I by Charles James Lever
Random Word
Spin the wheel and learn a new word!
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.
