Ecological

How to spell ecological

10 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce ecological

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ecological mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the relationships between living things and their environment, or to the protection of the natural world.

Ecological in a sentence

• The new factory was assessed for its ecological impact on the river.

• Researchers studied the ecological balance of the wetland over five years.

Where does ecological come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word descends from the Greek oikos, which literally meant 'house' or 'household', combined with logos, meaning 'study', 'account', or 'reasoning'. The German zoologist Ernst Haeckel coined the parent term 'Oekologie' in 1866 to name the study of organisms in relation to their surroundings, picturing nature as a kind of household economy. English took it up as 'ecology' in the late nineteenth century, and the adjective 'ecological' followed naturally with the familiar -ical ending. The same oikos root sits inside 'economy' and 'economics', since both originally concerned the management of a household, which is a useful memory hook for the opening 'eco' spelling. The word stayed fairly technical until the environmental movement of the twentieth century pushed it into everyday speech about nature and conservation.

How the word is built

• eco- (from Greek oikos: house, household, hence environment)
• log (from logos: study, account)
• -ical (adjective suffix)