Biotechnology

How to spell biotechnology

13 letters · 6 syllables

How to pronounce biotechnology

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does biotechnology mean?

1. nounThe use of living organisms, cells, or biological processes to develop products, medicines, or industrial techniques.

Biotechnology in a sentence

• The company invested heavily in biotechnology to develop new vaccines.

• Advances in biotechnology have transformed modern crop production.

Where does biotechnology come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word is a modern compound assembled entirely from Greek building blocks. The first part comes from bios, meaning 'life'; the middle from tekhne, meaning 'craft, skill, or applied art'; and the ending from logia, meaning 'the study or science of something'. The word was coined in the early twentieth century, with an Hungarian agricultural engineer often credited with using a version of it around 1919 to describe the industrial use of living organisms. Its meaning sharpened dramatically in the 1970s once genetic engineering made it possible to manipulate cells and DNA directly, and the shortened form 'biotech' soon followed. Because every piece is a recognisable Greek root that also appears in common words like 'biology' and 'technology', the spelling is logical once you see it as three familiar parts joined together.

How the word is built

• bio- (life, from Greek bios)
• techno- (craft or skill, from Greek tekhne)
• -logy (study or science of, from Greek logia)