Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Ecology
/ɪˈkɑlədʒi/noun
The study of how organisms relate to each other and to their surroundings.
The Greek roots
οἶκος
oîkos
house, household
λόγος
lógos
account, study
Literally: “study of the household”
The story of the word
Ernst Haeckel coined Oecologie in 1866 to name what Darwin had left unnamed, the whole economy of relations between a creature and its world. Economy is the older sibling from the same οἶκος, the management of a household, so the two words that now argue with each other in every planning dispute were born in the same Greek room. The οἰκουμένη, the inhabited world, gives ecumenical, and the household beside another gives parish.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → German scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1873
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
economyecosystemecumenicalparishdiocese
In a sentence
Draining the marsh changed the ecology of the whole valley within a decade.