Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The classification of organisms in an ordered system that indicates natural relationships.
- n. The science, laws, or principles of classification; systematics.
- n. Division into ordered groups or categories: "Scholars have been laboring to develop a taxonomy of young killers” ( Aric Press).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The laws and principles of taxology, or their application to the classifying of objects of natural history; that department of science which treats of classification; the practice of classifying according to certain principles.
Wiktionary
- n. uncountable The science or the technique used to make a classification.
- n. A classification; especially, a classification in a hierarchical system.
- n. systematics, uncountable The science of finding, describing, classifying and naming organisms.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. That division of the natural sciences which treats of the classification of animals and plants, primarily by consideration of their natural relationships with respect to their structure or genetic origin; the laws or principles of classification; systematics.
- n. A systematic arrangement of objects or concepts showing the relations between them, especially one including a hierarchical arrangement of types in which categories of objects are classified as subtypes of more abstract categories, starting from one or a small number of top categories, and descending to more specific types through an arbitrary number of levels. An ontology usually contains a
taxonomy as one of the important principles of organization.
WordNet 3.0
- n. (biology) study of the general principles of scientific classification
- n. practice of classifying plants and animals according to their presumed natural relationships
- n. a classification of organisms into groups based on similarities of structure or origin etc
Etymologies
- From French taxonomie. (Wiktionary)
- French taxonomie : Greek taxis, arrangement; see taxis + -nomie, method (from Greek -nomiā; see -nomy). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“A taxonomy is a nested hierarchy based on shared characterists.”
“Darwin proposes that the nested hierarchy of Linnaean taxonomy is due to the nested hierarchy of descent.”
“A taxonomy is a type of nested hierarchy classification based on character traits.”
“In other words, the nested hierarchy of the observed Linnaean taxonomy is explained as due to the nested hierarchy of the posited descent from common ancestors.”
“ID guy: Except that taxonomy is based on CHARACTERISTICS.”
“Linnaean taxonomy is also a nested hierarchy, but he had very limited knowledge of Reptiles and he set Reptiles as a separate class of Animals; therefore the class is not monophyletic.”
“BTW I said "clade" instead of "phylum" because the problem I see with Linnaean taxonomy is that it organizes the taxa on the basis of morphology BUT MAKES NO PREDICTIONS.”
“A taxonomy is a type of nested hierarchy based on a classification scheme, such as a biological classification.”
“A biological taxonomy is a classification scheme based on character traits.”
“However Linnean taxonomy is a nested hierarchy through-n-through.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘taxonomy’.
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GRE Barron's 800
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abject, abjure, abscission, abscond, abstemious, abstinence, abysmal, accretion and 787 more...
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SCIE - statistics
a priori probability, Abbe-Helmert crit..., absolute error, absolutely unbias..., accuracy, ACF, affinity, AIC, algorithm, allometry, alphabet, anomic and 4171 more...
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INTERP - terminology management terms
Terms from the fields of terminology, lexicography, lexicology and corpus linguistics
reworder, rewording, parser, parsing, tagger, tagging, aligner, aligning, content analysis, content analyzer, corpus management, glossary and 546 more...
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TECH - web application frameworks
object-oriented p..., ALGOL, validation, Erlang, markup language, Python, hibernate, framework, Apache, template, mapper, Java and 310 more...
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fancy essay words
hiatus, ontology, exegesis, hermeneutics, dialectics, demiurge, ascertain, contention, eschatological, synecdoche, centripetal, centrifugal and 96 more...
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mother earth inspired
taxonomy, botany, orchidaceae, arboraceous, bosky, myrtle, magnoliophyta, stamen, gametophyte, hepatic, liverwort, thallus and 7 more...
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theory and history of art: terms and ...
phenomenological, nonphenomenological, kineticism, mechanizing, digitalizing, utations, trajectory, synthesized, spatio-temporal, proliferation, quantification, iterative and 118 more...
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cuzican's Words
lexicon, tirade, innocuous, apathy, narcissist, subtle, agnostic, plethora, malleable, catalyst, pithy, irate and 116 more...
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andystardust's Words
liminal, soporific, solipsism, calumny, sanguine, egregious, inimical, corpus, divulge, a fortiori, salutary, evanescence and 118 more...
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Vocab
Words that I come across, and go blank, or want to clarify.
nefarious, edifice, malevolent, ostensible, folderol, bauble, livid, amnesty, calculus, saddlery, maisonette, cuisse and 423 more...
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The New Yorker
prejudice, ignominious, quintessence, disparity, vanguard, repudiated, eclectic, dredge, taxonomy, pugnacious, surreptitiously, pudgy and 113 more...
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List 1
erudite, iniquitous, acrimonious, implacable, fractious, irascible, debonair, churlish, brusque, sycophantic, phlegmatic, indomitable and 108 more...
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vorpal's Words
parabiosis, penumbra, defenestrate, portmanteau, sturm und drang, perspicacious, quixotic, copacetic, obfuscate, inveigle, shadenfreude, cloister and 349 more...
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artoparts's Words
illation, finite, edify, abide, abrade, vouch, amiss, vociferate, perusing, techantiquery, rigamarole, holon and 615 more...
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taxo-, taxi-, tax-
of or relating to grouping or arranging
taxonomy, taxidermy, taxidermist, heterotaxia, parataxis, homotaxy
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Words of Dinosaurology
This quickly got bigger and weirder than originally intended, so now it's housing terms that relate to the study of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. See also Dinosaurs, Pterosaurs, Ichthy...
zygopophyses, ziphodont, plesiomorphic, cleidoic, endothermy, ectothermy, viviparous, vertebrae, cervical, dorsal, sacral, caudal and 628 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for taxonomy.
ruzuzu No need for apologies--it makes me happy that I found something of interest! Mar 14, 2011
Prolagus (Sorry, ruzuzu, your link came right before my Monday phylogeography seminar.) Mar 14, 2011
Prolagus Also, DNA barcoding is based on a single locus, which means you would be looking at a gene tree and not a species tree.
And even if you actually analyze multiple loci, and identify clusters, it is not trivial to decide what the rank of that cluster is - a species? a subspecies? something else? Mar 14, 2011
ruzuzu "One of the challenges for taxonomy is that it is often seen as an old and intellectually unchallenging, conveyor- belt science, that simply involves describing new species. Worse still, it's been suggested that the analysis could be done just as well by comparing the DNA of each species – a kind of barcode taxonomy. Not so, say taxonomists, there is much more to their science than just comparing DNA. They are the curators of knowledge about species – their identity, how they live, and how they interact with others and the environment. They enable us to understand the functional role of biodiversity and help with the diagnosis of exotic pests and disease organisms. Measuring the impact of climate change on biodiversity is another key and burgeoning area requiring their skills."
--Taxonomy: The naming crisis, from The Independent
Mar 13, 2011