Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Taxon
/ˈtæksɒn/noun
Any named group in biological classification, at any rank from species to kingdom.
The Greek roots
τάξις
táxis
arrangement, ordering
τάσσω
tássō
to draw up in ranks
Literally: “an ordered group”
The story of the word
The root is military. τάσσω is what a general does to his troops, and τάξις is the resulting battle order, which Greek then extended to any arrangement. Candolle coined taxonomy in 1813; taxon is a twentieth-century back-formation from it, made because biologists needed one short noun for a group of any rank. The same τάξις is in syntax, words drawn up in order, and in taxidermy, skin arranged.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 20th century
Same family
taxonomysyntaxtacticstaxidermy
In a sentence
The revision split one taxon into four, and the fieldwork of thirty years had to be relabelled.