King James Bible Dictionary

PLANTA'TION, noun [Latin plantatio, from planto, to plant.]

1. The act of planting or setting in the earth for growth.

2. The place planted; applied to ground planted with trees, as an orchard or the like.

3. In the United States and the West Indies, a cultivated estate; a farm. In the United States, this word is applied to an estate, a tract of land occupied and cultivated, in those states only where the labor is performed by slaves, and where the land is more or less appropriated to the culture of tobacco, rice, indigo and cotton, that is, from Maryland to Georgia inclusive, on the Atlantic, and in the western states where the land is appropriated to the same articles or to the culture of the sugar cane. From Maryland, northward and eastward, estates in land are called farms.

4. An original settlement in a new country; a town or village planted.

While these plantations were forming in Connecticut--

5. A colony.

6. A first planting; introduction; establishment; as the plantation of christianity in England.

PLANT'-CANE, noun In the West Indies, the original plants of the sugar cane, produced from germs placed in the ground; or canes of the first growth, in distinction from the ratoons, or sprouts from the roots of canes which have been cut.