organism
a form of life composed of mutually interdependent parts that maintain various vital processes.
a form of life considered as an entity; an animal, plant, fungus, protistan, or moneran.
any organized body or system conceived of as analogous to a living being: the governmental organism.
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.
Origin of organism
1Other words for organism
Other words from organism
- or·gan·is·mic, or·gan·is·mal, adjective
- or·gan·is·mi·cal·ly, adverb
- su·per·or·gan·ism, noun
Words that may be confused with organism
- organism , orgasm
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use organism in a sentence
This year, Blum’s team and two other groups of researchers reported that mercury pollution also reaches organisms in deep-sea trenches.
Researchers found signs of human pollution in animals living six miles beneath the sea | Kate Baggaley | November 19, 2020 | Popular-ScienceEssential genes are often thought to be frozen in evolutionary time — evolving only very slowly if at all, because changing or dying would lead to the death of the organism.
Scientists Find Vital Genes Evolving in Genome’s Junkyard | Viviane Callier | November 16, 2020 | Quanta MagazineThe theory of evolution states that groups of organisms change over time.
In the paper, the researchers discuss the possibility of taking samples for eDNA use while at the same time using methods like hydroacoustics, which detect the presence of organisms deep underwater, to tell them where to take the sample.
Scientists are tracking down deep sea creatures with free-floating DNA | Kat Eschner | November 5, 2020 | Popular-ScienceThere’s great variety in intromitta because they — like every other part of an organism — have been shaped by evolutionary pressures.
‘Phallacy’ deflates myths about the penises of the animal kingdom | Bethany Brookshire | November 3, 2020 | Science News
The task scientists now face is the reconstruction of the superorganism.
An Epidemic of Absence: Destroying the Bugs in Our Bodies Can Be Dangerous to Our Health | Moises Velasquez-Manoff | September 9, 2012 | THE DAILY BEASTThe directions for the superorganism—the walking, living, eating, breathing, correctly functioning you—comprise 151 pages.
An Epidemic of Absence: Destroying the Bugs in Our Bodies Can Be Dangerous to Our Health | Moises Velasquez-Manoff | September 9, 2012 | THE DAILY BEAST
British Dictionary definitions for organism
/ (ˈɔːɡəˌnɪzəm) /
any living biological entity, such as an animal, plant, fungus, or bacterium
anything resembling a living creature in structure, behaviour, etc
Derived forms of organism
- organismal or organismic, adjective
- organismally, adverb
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Scientific definitions for organism
[ ôr′gə-nĭz′əm ]
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.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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