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
When Henry found that Forester was not in his room in the morning, he concluded that he had rambled out towards Salisbury Craigs, whither he talked the preceding day of going to botanize.
From Tales and Novels — Volume 01 by Maria Edgeworth
We would bury both theological rancor and atheistical pretension in the same barrow, and agree never to "peep and botanize" over their common grave.
From Life: Its True Genesis by R. W. Wright
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
We will not "peep and botanize" on sacred soil, nor submit our most refined delights to the impertinences of critical analysis.
From Collections and Recollections by George William Erskine Russell
He also sketched, and botanized with the Poet.
From Tennyson and His Friends by Various
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
We recognized with pleasure the spots where we had botanized when going up the Orinoco.
From Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804 — Volume 2 by Alexander von Humboldt
Then followed girls who painted, poetized, botanized, and hammered metal.
From Visionaries by James Huneker
I have never fished nor botanized here, but I have been a-birding many times.
From Roof and Meadow by Dallas Lore Sharp
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
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
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
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.