Ecology

//ɪˈkɒl.ə.d͡ʒi// noun

noun ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The branch of biology dealing with the relationships of organisms with their environment and with each other. countable, uncountable

    "As a graduate student, he was working on a thesis: The Ecology of the Black Creek Area. He had to investigate the relationships, past and present, of men and plants and animals in this region."

  2. 2
    the branch of biology concerned with the relations between organisms and their environment wordnet
  3. 3
    Any study of the relationships of components of a system with their environment and with each other. broadly, countable, uncountable

    "social ecology"

  4. 4
    the environment as it relates to living organisms wordnet
  5. 5
    The totality or pattern of relationships of components of a system with their environment and with each other. countable, uncountable

Synonyms

All synonyms
aerobiologyagrobiologyanatomyanimal physiologyanthropologyastrobiology

Example

More examples

"Pollution has a disastrous effect on the ecology of a region."

Etymology

Calque of German Ökologie (coined in 1866 by Ernst Haeckel), from Ancient Greek οἶκος (oîkos, “house”) + -λογία (-logía, “study of”). By surface analysis, eco- + -logy.

Related phrases

chemical ecologycultural ecologydeep ecologyecology blockhuman ecologyrestoration ecologyecology blockecosystem engineerfood chain

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.