zoological
AmericanOther Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of zoological
Explanation
Anything zoological is about animals. It’s logical that you’d use the word at a zoo, where critters and beasts hang out. This is an easy word to remember if you think about zoos. In fact, zoo is short for Zoological Gardens, the first of which was created by the London Zoological Society to house the society’s wild animals. Zoo comes from the Greek word for animal, zoion, plus -ology for “the study of” and then -ical, an ending that makes the word an adjective. If you’re describing something that has to do with the study of animals, zoological is your word.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Hertfordshire Zoo says the successful breeding programme is a "significant victory for the wider zoological community, with only a handful of black and rufous sengi currently residing in the UK".
From BBC • Mar. 14, 2026
Belgium's AfricaMuseum is the country's biggest dedicated to the Congo, displaying millions of colonial-era objects and zoological specimens.
From Barron's • Feb. 12, 2026
To reconstruct the fungus's historical distribution, international collaborators examined 2,280 amphibian specimens collected between 1815 and 2014 and stored in zoological museums worldwide.
From Science Daily • Jan. 19, 2026
It is unclear what caused the caller’s zoological mix-up.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 28, 2025
The last fact wasn’t actually disappointing, but a point of zoological interest.
From "Klawde: Evil Alien Warlord Cat" by Johnny Marciano and Emily Chenoweth
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
