taxonomist

American  

[taks-ah-nuhm-ist] / tæksˈɑ nəm ɪst /

noun

• taxonomists
  plural

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

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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

“It’s outrageous what’s going on,” says Robert Scotland, a plant taxonomist at the University of Oxford.

From Science Magazine ● Oct. 10, 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

So today we’re bringing you something in that spirit: an interview with Jennifer Parrucci, a senior taxonomist at The Times, about the interesting things she has found digging through the paper’s 171-year archives.

From New York Times ● Dec. 25, 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

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

From Science Daily ● Jul. 12, 2026

We want people who are ornithologists and taxonomists, of course.

From Science Magazine ● Nov. 3, 2023

Meanwhile, taxonomists can be hard to come by, and she said this is even truer for small, obscure, and uncharismatic groups of organisms.

From Salon ● Jul. 7, 2023

“Scientists, who have more specimens than taxonomists can measure or observe,” they write, can use crowdsourced measurements to “accelerate” scientific discovery — even as they provide fun fodder for museumgoers.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 2, 2022

Besides being a brilliant morphologist, Balfour was an accomplished naturalist, and had he lived would probably have taken a high place among British taxonomists.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" by Various