transcription, транскрипция: [ ɔ:ˈɡænɪk ]
adjective (Environment) (Lifestyle and Leisure) Of food: produced without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, etc., by adding only organic material to the soil. Etymology: Organic in this sense was originally applied to the fertilizers themselves, signifying that they were derived from living matter, unlike the inorganic chemical fertilizers. The adjective was then applied to the method of farming in which organic fertilizers were used (from about the early forties onwards), and finally to the produce of this method of farming. A term such as organic vegetables therefore represents two stages of abbreviation from the more accurate but impossibly cumbersome vegetables grown using a method of agriculture employing only organic materials. Such vegetables are organic in the sense that they contain no traces of the inorganic chemicals often used in vegetable production, but the term organic vegetables rightly strikes some people as a tautology, since all living things are organic. History and Usage: Organic was first applied to the produce of organic farming methods in the seventies, when environmental concerns began to gain a place in the public consciousness. However, organic produce was considerably more expensive than that produced by modern methods and for some time it was considered to be the province of health-food freaks (an attitude which had prevailed in developed countries when organic farming was first tried in the forties as well). However, demand for organic produce grew markedly in the eighties, as did awareness of the meaning of the term; this was largely because of the success of the green movement and growing public concern about the potentially harmful effects of agricultural chemicals (fed by such scares as the one over Alar in apples). By the end of the eighties organically grown fruit and vegetables were regularly on sale alongside those produced by mainstream farming techniques, and it was even possible to buy organic meat (that is, meat from animals that had been fed only on organic produce). High-tech greens who like the way microwaves cook their organic veg could find the new foodprobe...worth investigating. Practical Health Spring 1990, p. 9 More recently, the desire for organically grown, pesticide-free produce has created a new kind of city garden where food plants are mixed with flowers. Garbage Nov.-Dec. 1990, p. 36