taxonomist

American  

[taks-ah-nuhm-ist] / tæksˈɑ nəm ɪst /

noun

• taxonomists
  plural

1. an expert or practitioner in taxonomy, especially in biology.

---

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• non-taxonomist
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• taxonomists
  plural

Explanation

A taxonomist is a biologist that groups organisms into categories. A plant taxonomist for example, might study the origins and relationships between different types of roses while an insect taxonomist might focus on the relationships between different types of beetles. A taxonomist is not to be confused with a taxidermist, a person who specializes in the stuffing and mounting of dead animals. It's true, both words share their origins in the Greek taxis meaning "arrangement." But in the case of a taxonomist, it's not dead animals that are being arranged, it's hierarchies of species.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

taxonomist taxonomists

The spider was first spotted by Professor Greg Anderson, a biomedical researcher who is also a spider taxonomist and photographer.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 26, 2026

“We cannot prioritize stability over social justice,” counters Marcos Raposo, an ornithologist and taxonomist at the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, author of another editorial.

From Science Magazine ● Sep. 5, 2023

Of that creature, a British taxonomist named Oldfield Thomas wrote in 1888 that “no zoologist has dared to describe it.”

From Washington Post ● Apr. 11, 2023

Jennifer Parrucci is a senior taxonomist at The Times who spends her time digging through the paper’s 171-year archives.

From New York Times ● Dec. 27, 2022

Mendel, as we shall see, was an instinctual gardener—a breeder of plants, a counter of seeds, an isolator of traits; Darwin was a garden digger—a classifier of plants, an organizer of specimens, a taxonomist.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Styling himself an outlaw, Mr. Hoser would go on to fight for the rights of snakes and amateur scientists alike, becoming one of what Mr. St. George calls the “most prolific” taxonomists to ever live.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026

Despite the growing value of citizen science, the researchers emphasize that expert taxonomists remain indispensable.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 12, 2026

Biologists must sometimes evaluate dried specimens for features they can’t see on images, for instance, and taxonomists work closely with molecular biologists to identify plants and their evolutionary relationships based on DNA samples.

From Science Magazine ● Oct. 10, 2023

"This gap is much more difficult to fill short-term, as we're not able to train taxonomists with the speed we need, for groups in which we don't have specialists in Brazil," he explained.

From Salon ● Sep. 3, 2023

In some instances the existence of elementary species is so obvious, that they have been described by taxonomists as systematic varieties or even as good species.

From Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation by Hugo de Vries