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herbicide

UK/ˈhɜːbɪsaɪd/US/ˈ(h)ɝbɪsaɪd/
nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — herb sits at #3,682leans written

Other forms: herbicides

A herbicide is a chemical sprayed to kill unwanted plants. Spray a herbicide.

A selective one kills broadleaved weeds and leaves grass, which is how lawn treatments work. Weeds develop resistance to a herbicide the same way bacteria do to antibiotics.

Volker Prasuhn · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of herbicide

  1. 1nounherbicideA chemical sprayed to kill unwanted plants.C1

    “The herbicide took the nettles and half the hedge.”

herbicide is a chemical.

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *gʰreh₁-

  2. Latin

    herba

  3. Old French

    erbe

  4. Middle English

    herbe

  5. English

    herb

  6. English, today

    herbicide

From herb + -icide. herb comes from Middle English herbe, erbe, from Old French erbe (French herbe), from Latin herba. Initial h was restored to the spelling in the 15th century on the basis of Latin, but it remained mute until the 19th century and still is for many speakers. a doublet of yerba.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Farm & Countryside

Practise this word

herbicide in the wild

  • Agent Orange is a chemical herbicide and defoliant.

    Agent Orange

  • Selective herbicides control specific weed species while leaving the desired crop relatively unharmed, while non-selective herbicides (sometimes called "total weed killers") kill plants indiscriminately.

    Herbicide

  • The combined effects of herbicides, nitrogen fertilizer, and improved cultivars has increased yields (per acre) of major crops by three to six times from 1900 to 2000.

    Herbicide

  • Roundup is a brand name of herbicide originally produced by Monsanto, which Bayer acquired in 2018.

    Roundup (herbicide)

  • Prior to the late-2010s formulations, it used broad-spectrum glyphosate-based herbicides.

    Roundup (herbicide)

1 / 4

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the erbe family

herb

herbicide — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others

  • herbal