620: plant and plan Aug 19, 2016

Plants are partly responsible for the transition into the first of two major change in human civilization. Planning agriculture allowed people to live in one area, and plan more for the future. The word 'plant' comes from the Old English 'plante' meaning 'seedling'. This is from the Latin 'planta' for ‘sprout' or 'cutting’, and was influenced by 'plantare', a French verb meaning 'fix in a place’. Similarly, the word 'plan' came into English in the late 17th century: from French an earlier word 'plant' meaning ‘ground-plan' and was further influenced by the Italian word 'pianta' which was a ‘plan of building’. Both 'plant' and 'plan' come from the same Latin root.