zoological
AmericanOther Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of zoological
Explanation
Anything zoological is about animals. It’s logical that you’d use the word at a zoo, where critters and beasts hang out. This is an easy word to remember if you think about zoos. In fact, zoo is short for Zoological Gardens, the first of which was created by the London Zoological Society to house the society’s wild animals. Zoo comes from the Greek word for animal, zoion, plus -ology for “the study of” and then -ical, an ending that makes the word an adjective. If you’re describing something that has to do with the study of animals, zoological is your word.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The reality of constant financial worries led to Mee donating the zoo to the charity Dartmoor Zoological Society in 2014, with him staying on as a trustee.
From BBC • Feb. 2, 2026
Researchers examining spiders and scorpions at the Zoological Collections Laboratory of the Butantan Institute in São Paulo, Brazil, noticed something unusual on a spider only a few millimeters long.
From Science Daily • Jan. 28, 2026
Panda twins Lei Lei and Xiao Xiao are due to be transported by truck out of Ueno Zoological Gardens, their birthplace, disappointing many Japanese fans who have grown attached to the furry four-year-olds.
From Barron's • Jan. 27, 2026
In May, the San Francisco Zoological Society, the park’s nonprofit operator, split down the middle in a failed attempt to remove her.
From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 18, 2025
Early in his career Owen used his influence at the Zoological Society to blackball a young man named Robert Grant whose only crime was to have shown promise as a fellow anatomist.
From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
