Ecosystem

How to spell ecosystem

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce ecosystem

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ecosystem mean?

1. nounA community of living organisms together with the physical environment they interact with, treated as a single connected unit.
2. nounA complex network of interconnected parts, especially in business or technology, that function together as a whole.

Ecosystem in a sentence

• Draining the wetland damaged the entire ecosystem for decades.

• The company built an entire ecosystem of apps that share one login.

• The documentary explained how a single missing predator can unbalance an ecosystem.

• Local suppliers form a vital part of the regional business ecosystem.

Where does ecosystem come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word is a relatively modern coinage, dating to the 1930s, when the British ecologist Arthur Tansley introduced 'ecosystem' in 1935 as a shorter way of saying 'ecological system'. The 'eco-' element traces back to the Greek oikos, which literally meant 'house' or 'household', the same root that gives us 'economy' (originally the management of a household) and 'ecology' (the study of living things in their dwelling place). The 'system' half comes through Latin systema from the Greek systema, meaning 'an organised whole put together from parts', built from syn 'together' and histanai 'to set or place'. So the literal sense is a 'household-system': the living community of plants and animals together with the physical surroundings they share. Because the word is welded together from two familiar pieces, the spelling trap is simply remembering it is one solid word with no hyphen and a single 's' joining the halves.

How the word is built

• eco- (from Greek oikos: house, household, dwelling)
• system (an organised whole of connected parts)