body plan

American  

noun

1. Biology. the basic shape of members of an animal phylum; the general structure each individual organism assumes as it develops.

2. Naval Architecture. a diagrammatic elevation of a hull, consisting of an end view of the bow on one side of the center line and an end view of the stern on the other side, marked with water lines, diagonals, bow or buttock lines, stations, and sometimes details of the hull.

---

Etymology

Origin of body plan

First recorded in 1840–50

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

body plan

It captures a moment when snakes still had hindlimbs, still retained a more lizard-like skull in some respects, and had not yet fully acquired the body plan seen in their modern descendants.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 24, 2026

And by the late 1970s, the heyday of molecular biology and developmental genetics had arrived: fruit fly geneticists discovered Hox and other major genes that set up the fruit fly body plan.

From Scientific American ● Nov. 9, 2023

Instead, their body plan develops from the genes that acorn worms and vertebrates use to develop their heads.

From Salon ● Nov. 3, 2023

“It seems the whole echinoderm body plan is roughly equivalent to the head in other groups of animals,” study co-author Jeff Thompson of University of Southampton said in a release from that British school.

From Washington Times ● Nov. 2, 2023

The heavily illustrated volume, just 165 pages long, presented incontrovertible evidence that humans and chimpanzees were built to the same body plan.

From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin