Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Zoology
/zoʊˈɒlədʒi/noun
The branch of biology that deals with animals.
The Greek roots
ζῷον
zôion
living creature, animal
λόγος
lógos
account, study
Literally: “study of living things”
The story of the word
New Latin zoologia appears in the seventeenth century and English takes it in the 1660s, well before biology existed as a word. ζῷον is built on ζωή, life, and in Greek it also meant a painted figure, which is why a painter was a ζωγράφος, a writer of living things. The careful pronunciation keeps the two o's in separate syllables, zo-ology, because they belong to different pieces of the word.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → New Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1660s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
zodiacprotozoanzooepizootic
In a sentence
She switched from medicine to zoology after one term of dissections.