the.com/graft
part surgical miracle, part political sin — the same word fuses skin and steals fortunes
means To graft is to join one living thing onto another so they grow as one — a shoot onto a tree, skin onto a wound — and, in its darker sense, to gain money or advantage through corrupt use of a position.
from From the older English 'graff,' meaning a shoot or scion set into a tree, which traces back through Old French 'greffe' to Latin 'graphium,' a stylus or writing tool — named because the slim, pointed cutting resembled a pen nib. The corruption sense is a separate, later branch: 19th-century slang for illicit gain, possibly from the idea of 'work' (as in 'hard graft') souring into the work of lining one's own pockets.
- two meanings
- medical transplant and corrupt bribery share the word
- plant origin
- comes from grafting branches onto living trees
- british slang
- means honest hard work across the UK
- skin saves lives
- burn victims healed by transplanting their own skin
- boss tweed
- NYC graft cost taxpayers an estimated $200 million
oroville dam spillway collapse — 2017 california disaster where inadequate maintenance and budget cuts led to emergency evacuation of 188,000 people
construction of panama canal — 1881-1904 project where french engineer ferdinand de lesseps lost $287 million to corruption and graft before abandonment
tammany hall political machine — new york city democratic organization that controlled city politics 1789-1967 through systematic bribery and graft