taxonomy
Taxonomy is all about organizing and classifying. To make it sound more scientific, you could refer to your project of reorganizing your spice rack according to smell as a taxonomy of spices.
Taxonomy is a word used mainly in biology to talk about classifying living organisms, organizing them according to their similarities. If you've ever seen a chart with animals divided into species, genus, and family, you know what scientific taxonomy is. The word comes very straightforwardly from Greek words for "arrangement" — taxis — and "method" — nomia. So any special method for arranging or organizing things can be called taxonomy.
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a classification of organisms into groups based on similarities of structure or origin etctype of:hierarchya series of ordered groupings of people or things within a system
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practice of classifying plants and animals according to their presumed natural relationshipstype of:assortment, categorisation, categorization, classification, compartmentalisation, compartmentalizationthe act of distributing things into classes or categories of the same type
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(biology) study of the general principles of scientific classificationtypes:cladistic analysis, cladisticsa system of biological taxonomy based on the quantitative analysis of comparative data and used to reconstruct cladograms summarizing the (assumed) phylogenetic relations and evolutionary history of groups of organismstype of:systematicsthe science of systematic classification
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Vocabulary lists containing taxonomy
Words selected by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionaries. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
Study these paleontology terms and bone up on dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. You'll also unearth information about fossils, geology, and more.
