Taxonomy

//tækˈsɒn.ə.mi// noun

noun ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The science, technique, or process used to make a classification. countable, uncountable

    "Holonym: ontology (relational rather than solely hierarchical)"

  2. 2
    practice of classifying plants and animals according to their presumed natural relationships wordnet
  3. 3
    A classification; especially, a classification in a hierarchical system. countable, uncountable

    "Very little exists in the annals of the interwebs about Tostitos Hint of Lime. Many nights I’ve sucked down crusty mossed fingertips and typed away in a green-out (like a blackout, but from eating too much Tostitos Hint of Lime), searching for a like-minded fanclub, historical taxonomy, or even a press release."

  4. 4
    (biology) study of the general principles of scientific classification wordnet
  5. 5
    The science of finding, describing, classifying and naming organisms. uncountable
Show 1 more definition
  1. 6
    a classification of organisms into groups based on similarities of structure or origin etc wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
classgenuskingdomnomenclatureorderphylum

Example

More examples

"What's the difference between nomenclature and taxonomy?"

Etymology

Borrowed from French taxonomie. By surface analysis, taxo- + -nomy.

Related phrases

Flynn's taxonomyalpha taxonomybeta taxonomycross-taxonomyfolk taxonomygamma taxonomynumerical taxonomyscientific taxonomy

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