Agriculture

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈæɡɹɪˌkʌltʃɚ/

Definitions

1. The science, art, and business of cultivating soil, producing crops, and raising livestock for human use
2. The practice and industry of growing plants and raising animals for food, fiber, and other products
3. Farming and the cultivation of land to produce crops and livestock for human consumption and economic benefit
4. The practice of growing plants and breeding animals for food, fiber, and other products through systematic land management
5. The cultivation of crops and husbandry of livestock as methods of producing food and materials for human consumption

Etymology: Agriculture is a compound built from two Latin words that were once plain, everyday terms for land and labour. "Ager" meant "field," the same root that gave English "acre," while "cultura" meant "cultivation," from the verb "colere," to tend or till. Put together, "agricultura" meant the cultivation of the fields, and English took the word through Middle English, with some help from Middle French. The pairing is a neat piece of Latin wordbuilding, since "culture" carries the same tilling sense underneath its modern meanings of art and customs. The "-ture" ending comes from the Latin suffix "-tura," which turned a verb into a noun naming an action or result. Farming, in other words, is the root of both the field-word and the culture-word, which is why the two English words share a history.

Synonyms: farming, cultivation, agronomy, husbandry