body plan

American  

noun

1. Biology. the basic shape of members of an animal phylum; the general structure each individual organism assumes as it develops.

2. Naval Architecture. a diagrammatic elevation of a hull, consisting of an end view of the bow on one side of the center line and an end view of the stern on the other side, marked with water lines, diagonals, bow or buttock lines, stations, and sometimes details of the hull.

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Etymology

Origin of body plan

First recorded in 1840–50

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

body plan

The reason the chemical is so targeted comes down to the termite body plan.

From Science Daily ● May 9, 2026

There are over 6,000 living species of frogs known to scientists, as well as countless extinct species — and yet they all contain roughly the same skeletal body plan.

From Salon ● Feb. 9, 2024

And by the late 1970s, the heyday of molecular biology and developmental genetics had arrived: fruit fly geneticists discovered Hox and other major genes that set up the fruit fly body plan.

From Scientific American ● Nov. 9, 2023

“It seems the whole echinoderm body plan is roughly equivalent to the head in other groups of animals,” study co-author Jeff Thompson of University of Southampton said in a release from that British school.

From Washington Times ● Nov. 2, 2023

The heavily illustrated volume, just 165 pages long, presented incontrovertible evidence that humans and chimpanzees were built to the same body plan.

From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin