You can think of 'biology' as the study of life — everything that lives, grows, breathes, reproduces. From 'the study of life' it slides to 'the life-workings themselves': the biology of a plant is how that plant actually lives and functions.

可以把 biology 想成「研究生命的學問」——凡是會活、會長、會呼吸、會繁殖的東西都算。從「研究生命」再滑到「生命本身的運作」:某植物的 biology,指的就是那株植物實際上怎麼活、怎麼運轉。

From the word’s history

From Greek bios 'life' + -logy 'study of, account of' (via Greek logos). Coined around 1802 (Treviranus, and independently Lamarck) for the new science of living things — so the core is literally 'the study (-logy) of life (bio-)'.

來自希臘文 bios(生命)+ -logy(研究、學說,源自 logos)。約 1802 年由 Treviranus 與 Lamarck 各自造出,用來稱呼這門研究生物的新學科——所以字面核心比較像「對生命(bio-)的研究(-logy)」。

etymonline.com/word/biology (Online Etymology Dictionary)

One branch

生命的學問,以及生命的運作

登入就可以看這一支怎麼連回核心畫面。

science of living things · noun · A2

The science that studies living things like plants, animals, and people.

生物學

原始詞典資料4 筆記錄

以下是外部詞典記錄的用法,摘錄並精簡格式,我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的;有些用法可能上面已經講過了。

biologynoun/baɪˈɒl.ə.d͡ʒɪ/

  • 1

    The study of all life or living matter.

    • Near-synonyms: life science, life sciences; see also Thesaurus:biology
    • As in much of biology, the most satisfying truths in ecology derive from manipulative experimentation. Tinker with nature and quantify how it responds.
  • 2

    The living organisms of a particular region.

    • The object of these prizes is to stimulate and encourage original investigation by the aid of the microscope in the biology of North America, and, while the competition is open to all, it is especially commended to advanced students in biology in such of our universities and colleges as furnish opportunity for suitable work.
  • 3

    The structure, function, and behavior of an organism or type of organism.

    • the biology of the whale
  • 4

    archaicA biographical history.

    • That a Town has a biology of its own has been, since Freeman and Green, a familiar idea to us. But it was not in England, with its old established central governments, that the idea was likely to arise; and we know what the local history of our old antiquaries was like.

摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary,已精簡格式;依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用,改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。