Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The origin and development of an individual organism from embryo to adult.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as ontogenesis.
  • noun Specifically or specially, the ontogenesis of an individual living organism; the entire development and metamorphosis or life-history of a given organism, as distinguished from phylogeny.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The development of an individual organism.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun (biology) the process of an individual organism growing organically; a purely biological unfolding of events involved in an organism changing gradually from a simple to a more complex level

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From onto- + -geny, after German Ontogenie.

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Examples

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  • 'This starlit world is still the world, presumably, and every part of it, including humankind, is unchanged in its nature still embodying the history that is also its ontogeny. The Absence of Mind by Marilynne Robinson 2010.

    April 17, 2013

  • 'For Freud, self-alienation is a consequence of human ontogeny’. The Absence of Mind by Marilynne Robinson 2010.

    April 20, 2013