GRAFT
What does "GRAFT" mean?
A piece of living tissue or plant joined to another so the two grow together as one.
Meanings
- Living tissue (skin, bone, or a plant shoot) transplanted onto a host to fuse and grow. The burn surgeon took a skin graft from his thigh.
- To join such tissue, or to attach one thing onto another so they unite. They grafted a sweet apple variety onto wild rootstock.
- The acquisition of money or advantage by dishonest means, especially political corruption. The mayor's administration was riddled with graft.
- Hard work or labor (British informal). Building that wall was sheer graft. informal
Did you know?
- The gardener's 'graft' and the word 'graph' share a root: Greek 'graphein', to write - a thin grafting shoot reminded people of a pointed stylus.
Word origin
From Old French 'graife' / 'grafe', a stylus, from Greek 'graphein' (to write) - a young plant shoot was thought to resemble a pointed pencil. The 'corruption' sense is a separate 19th-century American slang.
Remember it
GRAFT = 'graph' with the 'ph' swapped for an 'f' and a 'T' tacked on - both come from the same writing-stylus root.
A little poem
Cut clean, bind tight, and wait through frost:
the wild stock and the chosen bud
forget which one of them was lost.
tercet
Wordplay
- The crooked councilman tried gardening and was great at it - turns out he already knew everything about graft.
What it teaches
Two separate lives can be bound so closely that they no longer know where one began.
Quick facts
What does GRAFT mean?
A piece of living tissue or plant joined to another so the two grow together as one.
Is GRAFT a valid word?
Yes — GRAFT is one of the answer words in Wordul, the daily word game.
How many letters is GRAFT?
GRAFT has 5 letters and 1 syllable.
Where does GRAFT come from?
From Old French 'graife' / 'grafe', a stylus, from Greek 'graphein' (to write) - a young plant shoot was thought to resemble a pointed pencil. The 'corruption' sense is a separate 19th-century American slang.
What can GRAFT teach us?
Two separate lives can be bound so closely that they no longer know where one began.
How players do
Be the first to solve it.