The ancient etymology of plants and vegetation

L M Leteane | Friday January 22, 2016 14:58

Here, we can relate fetje to the Indo-European word vege and see that it points to the fodder that grazing animals eat, and moreover relate them to a ‘fetch’ – which alludes to ‘what a person brings to the table [from hunting or gathering]’.

 Grazing animals feed by pulling vegetation into their mouths. In Setswana, this act is called phulo (a noun) and we can eas-ily relate it to the act of ‘pulling’. The verb of phulo is hula in Sotho and its English equivalent is ‘haul’. (In Setswana, hula has acquired a semantic shift in that it now means not ‘pull’ but ‘push’ (i.e. ‘shoot [out]’) – but it nevertheless remains a ‘force’ of sorts.) Let me now show that the term ‘plant’ itself – the substance on which grazing animals feed – is also premised on the term ‘pull’. The conventional etymology in dictionaries shows that it derives from the Latin word planta – which in Old Eng-lish is plante – meaning ‘a cutting’: thus a shoot or sprig cut from a larger entity and meant to be put into the ground to gener-ate offspring. Plante in Setswana terms relates to phula + nte: ‘i.e. [that which is] pulled out’. ‘Plante’, it is clear from the Setswana-based etymology, was, primordially, an active term and the noun ‘plant’ comes from this basic act of ‘pulling out’ such as to propagate [the particular organism]. So, ‘plant’ as meaning ‘to put into the ground for purposes of growing’ is a derived meaning stemming from this act of ‘pulling from’ in order to grow.

Plants are organisms that have ‘roots’ that dig into the ground and a ‘shoot’ that eventually emerges from the ground. Look-ing first at the roots, we can relate them to the Setswana term fata: ‘dig [into the ground]’. In Sotho, a tree is thus a se-fate: (‘that which digs into the ground’). In its sister language of Setswana, emphasis is placed on the stem and shoots – the part that is visible above the ground – and ‘tree’ in Setswana is thus se-tlhare (‘that which protrudes [from the ground]’). The rela-tion requires some explanation. Primordially, the consonant r was often pronounced like the French r, which sounds like the J in ‘Julio’, hence the proto-term was tlhaga (‘appear’). Tlhaga (grass) and se-tlhagi (tree) were both ‘[that which] appears [out of the ground]’. 

Looking deeper into ‘fate’, we can detect its ancient link with the English term ‘fate’ even though they are now pronounced differently. The link is that ‘fate’ (‘destiny’) was ‘what was entrenched’ (had ‘dug in’) and could not be changed. As for tlhaga, we must first note that the original pronunciation was thaga: Basically, before the Olmecs – an ancient African group of min-ers – accompanied the Egyptian god Tehuti (Thoth) to South America and acquired the Mayan-Nahautl penchant for ‘tla’, the Bantu pronunciation was ‘ta’ (I will explain this in more detail in my next article). Given this, we can now better relate it to the Middle English term tagga (‘protrude’). Tagga, in turn, formally relates to ‘tack’ (a prong, a twig) which formally relates to ‘buckle’ in that the ‘prong’ or pin of the buckle protrudes through a hole in order to hold a belt or shoe in place. Ultimately, then, the Greek compound word kala-fatis means ‘branches of a tree’ in that se-kala (‘scale’: ‘that which weighs’) derives from the two ‘arms’ (di-kala: ‘branches’) of a traditional scale – one to put an item on, and the other to put measuring weights on until the arms balance and the weight is thus known. 

Further considering ‘shoot’ (i.e. the protruding stem that appears to ‘shoot’ from the ground), the English term ‘flower’ was evidently fula-wa: ‘that which shoots (fula/hula)’: i.e. in the Setswana rather than Sotho sense. When flowers bloom the pet-als indeed appear to ‘shoot out’. So, at one very recent funeral in Tlokweng, ‘Greater’ Gaborone, the Sotho relatives of the deceased were intrigued by the dithunya (flowers) that were to be laid on the deceased’s grave (in Sotho, dithunya strictly means ‘guns’ – literally: ‘those that shoot’)!

Let us now etymologically relate ‘bush’ and ‘shrub’ to Setswana. Primordially, ‘bush’ is bo-oshe. Osha-osha is to be ‘inex-pressive’ (as if inhibited) which term relates to ‘new’ (sha) because of small, immature-seeming nature of bushes as compared to trees). ‘Shrub’ relates to she-horoba: ‘that which is stunted’ (goropana means ‘to shrink’ and the h, as in ‘Tehuti’ (tee-ruti: ‘foremost teacher’), I explained last week, is also pronounced like the French r). Lastly, let us pick a couple of plants whose names clearly describe their distinctive characteristic. Musu (‘Acacia tortillas’) is a thorny tree commonly found in sub-Saharan Africa. Mesu trees feature in the Sumerian epic The Marriage of Nergal and Ereshkigal and are mentioned with pride in Sargon II-Sennacherib’s ‘Palace without Rival’. Musukakani means ‘plentiful tree [i.e. tending to make up dense forests]’ as the Acacia tree definitely does where it grows – the reason being its ability to withstand dry conditions. 

Another is ‘cactus’ – an imported plant from South America into Europe. Again, it is thorny and mainly found in semi-arid areas (and may thus indeed be an indigenous species in Botswana). Evidently, as with the acacia tree, an abundance of thorns rather than leaves helps to minimise desiccation and discourages grazing animals from depleting the plant. It is the very fine thorns on the cactus that kakata (needle) anyone trying to feed on its leaves: hence its name. As promised, we will look more into the South America/Bantu language connection next week.

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