The origin of the word plant is the Latin word planta for sprout. The verb apposite to Latin planta is plantare meaning 'to drive into the ground with the foot'. Sense of a building planted or begun for an industrial process is first attested 1789 by using the word in the sense of implanted, rooted, anchored. Some times later the word plant for the place where heavy machinery was produced, was transferred to the machinery itself.
