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
I never dig up my dead and I never botanize on the graves of the past.
From The Kingdom Round the Corner A Novel by Coningsby Dawson
The grandees of the party followed the Bolivians, whose specialty entitled them to control practically the direction of the route, and plunged into the woods to botanize, to explore and to search for game.
From Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 11, No. 23, February, 1873 by Various
Here I would botanize or geologize at my will.
From A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
Two or three miles from Porth there is a great marsh made by the Afon river before it falls into the sea, and here Merritt had been accustomed to botanize mildly.
From The Terror A Mystery by Arthur Machen
Then followed girls who painted, poetized, botanized, and hammered metal.
From Visionaries by James Huneker
While visiting Paris in 1738 Linnaeus met and botanized with the two botanists whose "natural method" of classification was later to supplant his own "artificial system."
From A History of Science — Volume 2 by Henry Smith Williams
On we came, to the top of the Great Schiedeck, where H. and W. botanized, while I slept.
From Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe Compiled From Her Letters and Journals by Her Son Charles Edward Stowe by Harriet Beecher Stowe
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
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
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
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
We are either botanizing, or looking for stones and shells, to tell us the age of the world.
From The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. I by Charles James Lever
It was by no means the first time his passion for botanizing had been called a craze.
From Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 An Illustrated Weekly by Various
Definitions 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.
