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Which field chiefly studies organisms?

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organism

American  

[awr-guh-niz-uhm] / ˈɔr gəˌnɪz əm /

noun

• organisms
  plural

1. a form of life composed of mutually interdependent parts that maintain various vital processes.

2. a form of life considered as an entity; an animal, plant, fungus, protistan, or moneran.

3. any organized body or system conceived of as analogous to a living being.

   the governmental organism.

4. any complex thing or system having properties and functions determined not only by the properties and relations of its individual parts, but by the character of the whole that they compose and by the relations of the parts to the whole.

   Synonyms:

   structure, entity, network, organization

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organism British  

/ ˈɔːɡəˌnɪzəm /

noun

1. any living biological entity, such as an animal, plant, fungus, or bacterium

2. anything resembling a living creature in structure, behaviour, etc

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organism Scientific  

/ ôr′gə-nĭz′əm /

1. An individual form of life that is capable of growing, metabolizing nutrients, and usually reproducing. Organisms can be unicellular or multicellular. They are scientifically divided into five different groups (called kingdoms) that include prokaryotes, protists, fungi, plants, and animals, and that are further subdivided based on common ancestry and homology of anatomic and molecular structures.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• superorganism
  noun
• organismal
  adjective
• organismic
  adjective
• organismally
  adverb
• organismically
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• organisms
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of organism

First recorded in 1655–65; organ + -ism

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Explanation

An organism is a living thing that can function on its own. That includes your pet guppy, the tree in your backyard, and — of course — you. While the word organism typically indicates an actual living thing, you can also use organism to refer to anything that acts or functions like a living thing. For example, the social scene at a high school might be described as "a social organism" because it seems to have a mind of its own — like a living thing or even a vicious animal, depending on where one falls on the popularity scale.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

organism organisms

Then about 1.25 billion years ago, one of these photosynthesizing bacteria partnered with another one-celled organism to create green algae, one lineage of which became the ancestor of all plants.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2026

This organism, also nicknamed "sea vomit", is particularly harmful to coastal wildlife and economies.

From BBC ● Oct. 14, 2026

"No living organism or cell had ever been found that could live without having a functioning disulfide reductase system."

From Science Daily ● Sep. 25, 2026

Scientists call this type of organism a cryptic species, meaning it looks very similar to related species despite having significant genetic differences.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 22, 2026

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.

From "The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson

Corals are marine invertebrates made up of hundreds to thousands of tiny, soft-bodied organisms called polyps.

From Barron's ● Oct. 14, 2026

Uddin's photographs explore the miniature world of slime moulds, organisms that can be barely visible to the naked eye and whose fruiting structures are just one to two millimetres high.

From BBC ● Oct. 13, 2026

How different species developed and why life on Earth diversified from those single-cell organisms is often surprising and consistently engaging.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 13, 2026

Earlier research could determine how much phosphorus was present in ancient rocks, but those measurements revealed little about whether organisms could actually use it.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 12, 2026

But because all this is happening in such a thin layer, it also leaves the tree terribly vulnerable to invasive organisms.

From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson

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Related Words

• animal
• creature
• structure

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