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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

Etymology

Origin of organism

First recorded in 1655–65; organ + -ism

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

Lawns showed the lowest level of soil organism activity.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 28, 2026

Researchers also noted that Bifidobacterium has shown a favorable safety profile in preclinical models and is already well known as a probiotic organism.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 19, 2026

"These findings are exciting because they reveal that consumption of a specific amino acid can directly regulate gene expression in an organism by increasing production of a protein enriched in that amino acid," Tavazoie says.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 3, 2026

Mendelsohn treated the parts of the building as if they were one thing, a single living organism.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026

He lay in bed, thinking about the sufferings of his friend and colleague Dr. Musoke, fearful of what sort of organism had gotten loose among the medical staff at the hospital.

From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston

The findings suggest that longevity may depend in part on an immune system that remains highly effective against both infectious organisms and cancer.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 12, 2026

To analyze these data, the researchers developed a bioinformatic method based on 'reverse ecology,' an approach that uses genomic information to infer how organisms have adapted to particular environments.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 7, 2026

Many plants and basic organisms can sense things in their environments and change their behaviors accordingly, but this does not require them to have an awareness of their selves.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026

For Mr. Damasio, “consciousness is a biological process that allows organisms equipped with a nervous system to discover their own existence and the existence of a surrounding universe.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026

Griffith’s and Muller’s experiments had pointed to a material substance, a chemical that could move between organisms and was quite easily altered by X-rays.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Related Words

• animal
• creature
• structure