Agrochemicals

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Substances applied in agricultural settings to manage pests, stimulate plant growth, and improve soil conditions
2. Chemicals utilized in farming to control agricultural pests, enhance growth rates, and maintain soil health
3. Compounds employed in agriculture to protect plants from pests, promote growth, and enhance soil fertility

Etymology: Agrochemicals is simply a modern compound, built from "agro-" (from Latin "ager", field) and "chemical". The "chemical" half runs back through New Latin "chemicus" and "chemia" to Arabic "al-kīmiyāʔ", which passed into Medieval Latin as "alchemia", a borrowing from Ancient Greek "khumeíā", the word for alchemy. So the field that gave birth to the chemist's trade is buried inside a word about fields. The first half is the older and more literal of the two. "Ager" meant a cultivated plot of land, and English took "agro-" as a combining form to mean "of the field" or "of agriculture," which is how it appears in many technical coinages. Pairing it with "chemical" describes substances applied to crops and soil rather than something a scientist works with in a laboratory.

Synonyms: fertilizers, pesticides