organism

[awr-guh-niz-uhm]

noun

1. a form of life composed of mutually interdependent parts that maintain various vital processes.

2. a form of life considered as an entity; an animal, plant, fungus, protistan, or moneran.

3. any organized organized body or system conceived of as analogous to a living being.

   the governmental organism.

4. any complex thing or system having properties and functions determined not only by the properties and relations of its individual parts, but by the character of the whole that they compose and by the relations of the parts to the whole.

   Synonyms: structure, entity, network, organization

organism

/ ˈɔːɡəˌnɪzəm /

noun

1. any living biological entity, such as an animal, plant, fungus, or bacterium

2. anything resembling a living creature in structure, behaviour, etc

organism

1. An individual form of life that is capable of growing, metabolizing nutrients, and usually reproducing. Organisms can be unicellular or multicellular. They are scientifically divided into five different groups (called kingdoms) that include prokaryotes, protists, fungi, plants, and animals, and that are further subdivided based on common ancestry and homology of anatomic and molecular structures.

Other Word Forms

• organismic adjective
• organismal adjective
• organismically adverb
• superorganism noun
• organismally adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of organism¹

First recorded in 1655–65; organ + -ism

Example Sentences

Many of these organisms travel upward toward the surface each night to feed and then descend again by day, transporting carbon to the deep ocean in the process.

Read more on Science Daily

“I just find it very interesting to see how they work together as one organism,” he said.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

The researchers considered other explanations for the distinctive marks, such as self-inflicted shell growth patterns or traces from unrelated organisms.

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It seems everyone's talking about looking after their microbiome - the trillions of tiny organisms living in our digestive system – which influence everything from digestion and immunity to mood and sleep.

Read more on BBC

She compares the human body to a coral reef, where animals, plants, and microscopic organisms “cohabitate as one huge and beautiful chimeric metaorganism.”

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• animal 
• creature 
• structure