morphology

American  

[mawr-fol-uh-jee] / mɔrˈfɒl ə dʒi /

noun

• morphologies
  plural

1. the branch of biology dealing with the form and structure of organisms.

2. the form and structure of an organism considered as a whole.

3. Linguistics.

   1. the patterns of word formation in a particular language, including inflection, derivation, and composition.

   2. the study and description of such patterns.

   3. the study of the behavior and combination of morphemes.

4. Physical Geography. geomorphology.

5. the form or structure of anything.

   to gain an insight into the morphology of our political system.

6. the study of the form or structure of anything.

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morphology British  

/ mɔːˈfɒlədʒɪ, ˌmɔːfəˈlɒdʒɪk /

noun

1. the branch of biology concerned with the form and structure of organisms

2. the form and structure of words in a language, esp the consistent patterns of inflection, combination, derivation and change, etc, that may be observed and classified

3. the form and structure of anything

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morphology Scientific  

/ môr-fŏl′ə-jē /

1. The size, shape, and structure of an organism or one of its parts. Biologists usually describe the morphology of an organism separately from its physiology. In traditional systems of taxonomy, classifications were based on the morphological characteristics of organisms. However, a method of classification based purely on morphology runs the risk of grouping together organisms that are actually relatively unrelated but have evolved similar features. In more modern systems of taxonomy, the genetic similarity of organisms, studied through the methods of molecular biology, is considered in addition to morphology when establishing taxa.

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morphology Cultural  

1. The study of the structure of living things. (Compare anatomy and physiology.)

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• morphologist
  noun
• morphologic
  adjective
• morphological
  adjective
• unmorphological
  adjective
• morphologically
  adverb
• unmorphologically
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• morphologies
  plural

Etymology

Origin of morphology

First recorded in 1820–30; morpho- + -logy; first formed in German

Explanation

Morphology is the study of how things are put together, like the make-up of animals and plants, or the branch of linguistics that studies the structure of words. In morphology, the word part morph- means "form" and -ology means "the study of." So, those who study how something is made or formed are engaged in morphology. In biology, the morphology of fish might investigate how the gills work as part of the respiratory system. In language morphology, you might study how prefixes and suffixes added to a word change its meaning.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

morphology morphologies

"The morphology of C. libererrantes suggests that this species had a similar lifestyle," observes Carolin Haug.

From Science Daily ● May 25, 2026

"I think our work provides an important perspective on how much we can learn from studying morphology," Ferraioli explains.

From Science Daily ● Mar. 6, 2026

Using personalized “Explorer Key” cards, visitors can activate digital paleontological tools to probe the morphology and physiology of dinosaurs and other creatures.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 2, 2025

“Axon morphology in living animals is under constant and dynamic change,” says neuroscientist Tong Wang from ShanghaiTech University, who has studied beading in diseased neurons.

From Science Magazine ● Dec. 2, 2024

In a wild fly species named Drosophila pseudoobscura, for instance, Dobzhansky found multiple gene variants that influenced complex traits, such as life span, eye structure, bristle morphology, and wing size.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

In a paper published January 2025, Reichgelt and collaborator Christopher West compared the shapes of fossil leaves of the Miocene gathered and analyzed in many previous studies with a dataset of modern leaf morphologies.

From Salon ● Feb. 17, 2025

By comprehensively capturing 3D morphologies from the entire tissue volume, Tripath performed better than pathologists and outperformed deep learning models that rely on 2D morphology and thin tissue slices.

From Science Daily ● May 9, 2024

We can select and generate target morphologies by design.

From Scientific American ● May 31, 2023

Once you start introducing these little chemical factories — that's what a bacterium is, a tiny, little chemical factory — there's only three morphologies.

From Salon ● Dec. 19, 2022

From this it follows that broadly similar morphologies must have been reached by unrelated languages, independently and frequently.

From Language An Introduction to the Study of Speech by Edward Sapir

Related Words

• architecture
• arrangement
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