Organism Definition & Meaning

American

British

Scientific

Other Word Forms

Etymology

Examples

Related Words

Synonyms organism American [awr-guh-niz-uhm] / ˈɔr gəˌnɪz əm /

noun

1. a form of life composed of mutually interdependent parts that maintain various vital processes.

2. a form of life considered as an entity; an animal, plant, fungus, protistan, or moneran.

3. any organized organized body or system conceived of as analogous to a living being.

   the governmental organism.

4. 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.

   Synonyms: structure, entity, network, organization

organism British / ˈɔːɡəˌnɪzəm /

noun

1. any living biological entity, such as an animal, plant, fungus, or bacterium

2. anything resembling a living creature in structure, behaviour, etc

"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 organism Scientific / ôr′gə-nĭz′əm /

1. 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.

Other Word Forms

• organismal adjective
• organismally adverb
• organismic adjective
• organismically adverb
• superorganism noun

Etymology

Origin of organism

First recorded in 1655–65; organ + -ism

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.

Each species on Earth can trace its roots back to the same cluster of ancestral organisms and occupies a distinct position on a single, complex, prolifically branching, unfathomably extensive and largely invisible tree of life.

From The Wall Street Journal

“We had it. I always say this about culture, I always say this about a good team being a functioning organism.”

From Los Angeles Times

The idea helps explain why organisms are rarely perfectly matched to their surroundings.

From Science Daily

Roughly three centuries ago, Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus set out to catalog and name every living organism he could find.

From Science Daily

Other social organisms, including termites, may have followed similar evolutionary paths, although that possibility still needs further testing.

From Science Daily

Related Words

• animal
• creature
• structure

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.