taxonomist

American  

[taks-ah-nuhm-ist] / tæksˈɑ nəm ɪst /

noun

plural

taxonomists

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

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Other Word Forms

• non-taxonomist
  noun

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

Ricardo Viñas, who in November was laid off from his Seattle-based job as an information taxonomist for Meta, also wants less of that uncertainty.

From Seattle Times • Mar. 5, 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

Many credit taxonomist Carl Linnaeus for biology’s binomial nomenclature, but few mention the Bauhin brothers, Gaspard and Johann.

From Washington Post • Jul. 14, 2022

One reviewer of Doménech’s manuscript, Carlos Martínez, a centipede taxonomist at the University of Turku’s Zoological Museum, says he was “really mad” to learn about the origins of the centipede specimens.

From Science Magazine • Feb. 10, 2021

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