biologist
Americannoun
-
biologists
plural
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of biologist
Explanation
A biologist is a scientist who focuses on living organisms, including plants and animals. Wildlife biologists might specialize in studying African elephants. Biologists study a wide variety of life forms, from single-celled organisms to primates, and conduct research in many different areas, from the spreading of pathogens to the details of evolution. A marine biologist studies sea creatures and a microbiologist might study algae or bacteria. The word biologist is rooted in the Greek bios, or "life."
Vocabulary lists containing biologist
"Siberian Survivors" and "Tigers in the Wild"
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Roots: bio
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anim (life, mind, spirit); bio (life)
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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.
See Examples For:
The marine biologist looked back to a 2004 incident in Massachusetts, when water jets were used to drive a great white shark away from a shallow pond.
From BBC ● Oct. 24, 2026
Lucky for skeptics, Nadira Goffe interviewed a whale biologist about how realistic the film is.
From Slate ● Oct. 19, 2026
For the past five years, Sweet and fellow graduate student Mat Bloomfield have worked with cell biologist Daniela Cimini to investigate cells carrying abnormal numbers of chromosomes, a common characteristic of cancer.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 15, 2026
The emergence of myelin is given particular emphasis, being compared by cell biologist Robin Franklin to the “invention of microprocessors in computing.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 13, 2026
Some of the men tried to create some excitement for the biologist, Robert Clark, by putting some pieces of cooked spaghetti into one of his specimen bottles of ocean water.
From "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" by Jennifer Armstrong
He met students carrying out field work in the wetland waters asking them about their exams and ambitions to be marine biologists.
From BBC ● Oct. 28, 2026
University of Oregon biologists have brought prehistoric proteins back to life, reconstructing molecules that date back as far as 160 million years and naturally attack microbes.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 28, 2026
A team of biologists working in the early morning hours Friday collected the olive ridley sea turtle eggs and transferred them to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, the agencies said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2026
But California’s biggest river is now so warm that biologists expect a significant number of the eggs won’t hatch.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 22, 2026
Evolutionary biologists have recently been developing ever more sophisticated methods for drawing conclusions from comparisons of different plants and animals of known evolutionary histories.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
