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

"I'm including historical east coast wolves in a separate chapter of my dissertation comparing skull morphology between coastal and inland populations," he says.

From Science Daily ● Jan. 30, 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

The high efficiency is the result of several years of intensive materials research and studies of the interaction between the molecules in the material, the so-called morphology.

From Science Daily ● Dec. 4, 2024

“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

She would not abandon a daughter to this life, but train her to read the columns of blood and numbers in men’s eyes, to understand the morphology of survival.

From "Dreaming in Cuban" by Cristina García

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

As the researchers report in the journal Physical Review X, their results show that hexagonal morphologies -- in other words, six-sided structures -- such as molecules with six binding sites are ideal for self-assembly.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 4, 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 Sapir, Edward

Related Words

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