Definitions

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

  • noun The scientific study of animal behavior, especially as it occurs in a natural environment.
  • noun The study of human ethos and its formation.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as æcology.
  • noun The science of ethics; especially, applied ethics.
  • noun Mimicry.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A treatise on morality; ethics.
  • noun The science of the formation of character, national and collective as well as individual.

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

  • noun zoology The scientific study of human and animal behaviour.
  • noun obsolete The study of the human ethos.

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

  • noun the branch of zoology that studies the behavior of animals in their natural habitats

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French éthologie, from Latin ēthologia, art of depicting character, from Greek ēthologiā : ēthos, character; see ethos + logos, speech, expression; see –logy.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the Latin ēthologia ("the art of depicting or imitating character"), from the Ancient Greek ἠθολογία (ēthologia, "painting of character, especially by mimic gestures"), from ἠθολόγος (ēthologos, "painting character by mimic gestures"), from ἦθος (ēthos, "character”, especially “moral character").

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