Ecology

How to spell ecology

7 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce ecology

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ecology mean?

1. nounThe branch of biology dealing with the relationships of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings.

Ecology in a sentence

• She studied marine ecology at university before joining the research vessel.

• The report examined the ecology of the wetland and the species it supports.

Where does ecology come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word was coined in the 1860s by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel, who wrote it as 'Oekologie', from the Greek oikos meaning 'house' or 'household' and the familiar element -logia meaning 'study of'. Haeckel's idea was that organisms live together in a kind of shared household with their surroundings, so the literal sense is something like 'the study of the dwelling'. The same Greek oikos lies behind 'economy', which originally meant household management, so ecology and economy are linguistic cousins that both look at how a 'house' is run. English adopted the term in the 1870s, settling on the spelling 'ecology' with the smooth 'eco-' opening. The trap for writers is that opening syllable: it sounds like 'ee-' but is spelled simply 'eco', and the unstressed vowels can blur in speech.

How the word is built

• eco- (from Greek oikos: house, dwelling)
• -logy (from logos: study, account)