The Growing Edge Community - Is the word "hydroponics" Greek or Latin?

Is the word "hydroponics" Greek or Latin?

Is the word "hydroponics" Greek or Latin? We have seen both. Also, in the experiment I am doing, I have not placed any nutrients in the water. Is this still considered hydroponics even though I have not used any nutrients? I am growing beans and sunflowers. Thanks.
-- Patty, 03/18/2001

The Editor replies:
The term "hydroponics" is from the Greek words, "hydro" which means water and "ponos" which means labor. Collectively, when these terms are combined into "hydroponics," they translate as "working water." This term was coined by agricultural researcher W. F. Gericke in the early 1930s when he was performing experiments in plant nutrition.

Simply growing plants in plain water is considered "water gardening" and not hydroponics. When growing hydroponically, the plants are fed a nutrient solution that contains all of the nutrients that plants need in order to thrive.

Growing Edge reader Raul V. M. replies:
When I wrote my book Manual de Hidropinia (“Hydroponics Manual” or “Hydroponics Handbook”), I did a lot of research about the word “hydroponics,” including asking information about it from etymology professors at the University of Athens.

“Hydroponya” is a Greek word and was not “coined” by Dr. Gericke--he just used it. This word can be found in any good Greek dictionary. It is composed of the words “hydor” (not “hydro” as it is generally told) and “ponos.” The word ponos has two meanings when we consider the old and modern/popular Greek. In the modern/popular Greek, ponos means a pain like a headache or a pain like your feeling when somebody near you dies. This is also sometimes expressed as “ponyya.” These two meanings depend on the considered phrase and/or the placement of the word inside the phrase. In Old Greek, ponos means the result of the physical work of something or somebody over something, like the painting of a painter, the book written by a writer, or the result of the action of water or wind over soil. To join these two words to form a third one, in Greek, the consonant letter “r” has its place changed and put before the vowel “o” and then we have:

hydor + ponos = hydro + ponos = hydroponos.

When translating this word into the English language, the part hydro of the word remains unchanged and the part ponos is changed to ponics. In Latin languages, the part hydro is translated as hidro and the part ponos as ponia (from ponyya). So, in English we have hydroponics and in Latin languages, such as Spanish or Portuguese, we have hidroponia.

The real meaning of this word, as you can find in any Greek dictionary, is the result of the physical work of water over something. So, hydraulic generated electrical energy is hydroponics and the erosion of the soil caused by water is also hydroponics. To a certain extent, the result of water over a plant can be considered as a hydroponics. I say “to a certain extent” because the water not only has the physical work on the plants but chemical work as well.

But since the work of Dr. Gericke, hydroponics has been considered and adopted almost universally as this marvelous technology that some researchers and scientists today consider as a science by means of which we can cultivate plants without the use of soil as the provider of the needed elements for their survival and development.

Just for curiosity, in Greek, “agronomist” is “geoponos,” or “the one who leads with the work of the soil.”