Biology
nounThe scientific study of living organisms and their processes.
How to spell biology
7 letters · 4 syllables
How to pronounce biology
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does biology mean?
- nounThe scientific study of living organisms and their processes.
Biology in a sentence
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She earned her degree in marine biology last summer.
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The textbook covered cell biology in the opening chapters.
Where does biology come from?
Language of origin: Greek
The word biology is built from two Greek elements: bios, meaning 'life', and logia, meaning 'study' or 'an account of', from logos 'word, reason'. The modern term was coined relatively late, appearing in German and French scientific writing around 1800 (the German Biologie is often credited to naturalists such as Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck), and English adopted it shortly afterwards. Before this coinage, the study of living things was scattered across older labels like 'natural history'. The bio- element is shared with a long family of relatives such as biography, antibiotic, and symbiosis, all of which carry the sense of 'life'. The -logy ending, found across dozens of disciplines from geology to psychology, simply signals an organised body of study, and remembering that pairing of bio plus logy helps fix the spelling.
How the word is built
- bio- (from Greek bios: life)
- -logy (from Greek logia: study or discourse)
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