gardener
Pluralgardeners
- 1A person who grows plants or cultivates a garden.
The gardener spent the weekend pruning the apple trees and clearing fallen leaves.
Experienced gardeners rotate their crops each season to keep the soil healthy.
Similargrower, horticulturist, groundskeeper
Note
A borrowing that pushed out a native word: Middle English gardener came from Anglo-Norman and Old Northern French gardinier, and it displaced Old English wyrtweard. German made its own Gärtner from Garten plus -er, the same pattern of place-word plus agent suffix. On a household with several gardeners, the senior one is the head gardener, a fixed pairing in older domestic writing.
- 2A coachman who handles his team and carriage clumsily; an incompetent driver.
The passengers grumbled that they'd been saddled with a gardener who could barely keep the coach on the road.
Get on, gardener! Get on, you slow and clumsy coachman. The allusion is to a man who is both gardener and coachman.
2014, Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and FableNote
An old coaching insult, now obsolete. Ebenezer Cobham Brewer records the shout "Get on, gardener!" aimed at a slow, clumsy driver, and explains the jibe: it pictured a man who did double duty as gardener and coachman, and drove like the part-timer he was. Keep it for historical settings. Used today, it would simply be read as the ordinary plant-grower.
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Origin
From Middle English gardener, either calqued or borrowed from Anglo-Norman and Old Northern French gardinier. It is related to garden, and is comparable to German Gärtner. It displaced the native Old English word wyrtweard.