organism
a form of life composed of mutually interdependent parts that maintain various vital processes.
a form of life considered as an entity; an animal, plant, fungus, protistan, or moneran.
any organized body or system conceived of as analogous to a living being: the governmental organism.
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.
Origin of organism
1Other words for organism
Other words from organism
- or·gan·is·mic, or·gan·is·mal, adjective
- or·gan·is·mi·cal·ly, adverb
- su·per·or·gan·ism, noun
Words that may be confused with organism
- organism , orgasm
Words Nearby organism
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use organism in a sentence
Many speakers railed against uncertainties in releasing genetically engineered organisms.
Genetically modified mosquitoes have been OK’d for a first U.S. test flight | Susan Milius | August 22, 2020 | Science NewsTo understand sex completely, we need an explanation that goes back to the primordial soup of very early complex organisms and the immediate survival pressures they were under.
Sex Is Driven by the Impetus to Change - Issue 88: Love & Sex | Jill Neimark | August 12, 2020 | NautilusCogdell wasn’t fully convinced at first that this approach would hold up for other photosynthetic organisms, such as the purple bacteria and green sulfur bacteria that live underwater and are named for the colors their pigments reflect.
Why Are Plants Green? To Reduce the Noise in Photosynthesis. | Rodrigo Pérez Ortega | July 30, 2020 | Quanta MagazineMetabolisms are so low that these organisms can survive by consuming this ancient food matter.
He Found ‘Islands of Fertility’ Beneath Antarctica’s Ice | Steve Nadis | July 20, 2020 | Quanta Magazine“You can literally interpret the body of an organism as a guess about the structure of the environment,” Ramstead said.
What Is an Individual? Biology Seeks Clues in Information Theory. | Jordana Cepelewicz | July 16, 2020 | Quanta Magazine
He also wants to “replace every existing organism with a better one.”
“It is well established that a fetus is not a ‘person’; rather it is a sui generis organism,” the ruling stated.
Court Says Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Isn’t a Crime | Elizabeth Picciuto | December 9, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTThey need to become streamlined: an organism that is basically very primitive.
Vampires without Glitter or Girl Problems: Inside Guillermo del Toro’s ‘The Strain’ | Andrew Romano | July 14, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTScientists at the Scripps Research Institute produced the first living organism with synthetic bacteria this May.
WGA is classified as a lectin—a term for a protein produced by an organism to protect itself from predation.
Wheat Threatens All Humans, New Research Shows | David Perlmutter, MD | December 10, 2013 | THE DAILY BEASTThe organism is an actively motile spiral thread, about four times the diameter of a red corpuscle in length.
A Manual of Clinical Diagnosis | James Campbell ToddThe organism is a short, thick diplobacillus, is frequently intracellular, and is Gram-negative (Fig. 126).
A Manual of Clinical Diagnosis | James Campbell ToddThe state is, therefore, an artificial organism for the promotion of individual and collective good.
There are other infective diseases, in which we have not yet found the causative micro-organism, but we presume its existence.
Essays In Pastoral Medicine | Austin MalleyWe do not know the cause of yellow fever despite the claims of Sanarelli that he has isolated the specific micro-organism.
Essays In Pastoral Medicine | Austin Malley
British Dictionary definitions for organism
/ (ˈɔːɡəˌnɪzəm) /
any living biological entity, such as an animal, plant, fungus, or bacterium
anything resembling a living creature in structure, behaviour, etc
Derived forms of organism
- organismal or organismic, adjective
- organismally, adverb
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
Scientific definitions for organism
[ ôr′gə-nĭz′əm ]
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.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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