Definitions

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

  • noun The evolutionary development and history of a species or trait of a species or of a higher taxonomic grouping of organisms.
  • noun A model or diagram delineating such an evolutionary history.
  • noun A similar model or diagram delineating the development of a cultural feature.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun That branch of biology which attempts to deduce the ancestral history of an animal or a plant from its ontogeny or individual developmental metamorphoses; tribal history: opposed to ontogeny, or the origin and development of individual organisms. Also phylogenesis.

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

  • noun systematics The evolutionary history of an organism.
  • noun systematics, informal A phylogenetic diagram.
  • noun The historical development of a human social or racial group

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

  • noun (biology) the sequence of events involved in the evolutionary development of a species or taxonomic group of organisms

Etymologies

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

[Greek phūlon, race, class; see phylum + –geny.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

phylo- + -geny

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