Lamarck

American  

[luh-mahrk, la-mark] / ləˈmɑrk, laˈmark /

noun

1. Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de 1744–1829, French naturalist: pioneer in the field of comparative anatomy.

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Lamarck British  

/ lamark /

noun

1. Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet (ʒɑ̃ batist pjɛr ɑ̃twan də mɔnɛ), Chevalier de Lamarck. 1744–1829, French naturalist. He outlined his theory of organic evolution (Lamarckism) in Philosophie Zoologique (1809)

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Lamarck Scientific  

/ lə-märk′,lä- /

1. French naturalist who introduced the taxonomic distinction between vertebrates and invertebrates. His theory that the acquired characteristics of a species could be inherited by later generations was a forerunner to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, although it was eventually discredited.

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Example Sentences

Lamarck disputed this, arguing “that life at its essence is creative agency, that living beings, especially the smallest and humblest of them, continually remake the world,” as well as themselves.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 20, 2026

Nonetheless, as this book shows, Lamarck really was a scientific pioneer, recognizing the importance of the insight that living things change over time.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 20, 2026

In their classic theories of evolution, both Jean Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin suggested that giraffes' long necks evolved to help them reach leaves high up in a tree, avoiding competition with other herbivores.

From Science Daily • Jun. 3, 2024

While this mechanism for evolutionary change as described by Lamarck was discredited, Lamarck’s ideas were an important influence on evolutionary thought.

From Textbooks • Apr. 25, 2013

In Darwin’s time, the most commonly accepted mechanism of heredity was a theory advanced by the eighteenth-century French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee