body plan

noun

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

Word History and Origins

Origin of body plan¹

First recorded in 1840–50

Example Sentences

Their body plan involves one of the greatest evolutionary trade-offs of all time.

From Nautilus

The significance of the two topological defects observed in the hydra tissue is that they define its entire body plan because they eventually become the sites of the foot and head in the new cylindrical animal.

From Nautilus

Our own planet wasn’t always the way it is today, and a bewildering variety of body plans and biochemical strategies have already arisen and gone extinct.

From Nautilus

That is the point at which a spherical embryo starts to form a body plan, deciding where its head will end up, and when cells begin taking on specialized missions.

From MIT Technology Review

What fossils do exist — a handful of specimens dating to about 95 million years ago — suggest little change in the basic body plan from ancient to modern octopuses.

From Science News

A division in the middle (cutting it in two parts, so that you can see the whole circumference) may suggest to you the body plan.

From Project Gutenberg

The cardboard templates must be cut, one for each half-section, as shown in the body plan, Fig. 67.

From Project Gutenberg

A line cutting the body-plan diagonally from the timbers to the middle line.

From Project Gutenberg

On card-board or stiff paper, mark a series of patterns of the different sections shown on the body plan.

From Project Gutenberg

There are three of them,—the sheer plan, the half-breadth plan, and the body plan.

From Project Gutenberg