life formn.
/ˈlʌɪf fɔːm/, U.S. /ˈlaɪf ˌfɔrm/ 1. A living organism.
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the world > life > [noun]
shaftc888
blooda1325
livera1382
creaturea1387
live-wight1610
animate1642
life form1850
vitality1851
bioform1958
1850 Q. Homœopathic Jrnl. 2 219 The contagia must have had an origin similar to that of the inferior life-forms.
1869 Anthropol. Rev. 7 18 Geology bears unflinching witness to the fact, that the progression of life forms has not taken place by consecutive steps of ascent.
1895 Science 4 Jan. 23 This clear, candid and catholic statement of the origin and early history of a theory which..explains the origin of life-forms.
1905 Daily Chron. 17 Aug. 5/7 In the beginning, before life forms appeared, the sun shone on the ocean.
1940 Thrilling Wonder Stories Jan. 120/1 We know it is possible for alien, unique life-forms to exist on each of our planetary neighbors, equipped mysteriously to combat every force known to science.
1971 I. G. Gass et al. Understanding Earth ix. 139/2 Once life had become universally distributed over the face of the globe, it must have prevented the further generation of new life-forms.
1990 E. Harth Dawn of Millennium (1991) 1 The physiology of these creatures is different from that of other life-forms. Without sunlight, they are dependent on chemosynthesis for their energy source.
2005 Vanity Fair (N.Y.) Nov. 270/3 If it is a life-form, it is perhaps the most primitive—yet it has the ability to infect every human on the planet.
2. Botany and Ecology. A habit of growth or vegetative form characteristic of a plant or group of plants, esp. as representing adaptation to the environment. Various classifications of plant life forms have been proposed, but the most influential is that of C. Raunkiaer, which was originally described in series of papers in Botanisk Tidsscrift and other journals between 1904 and 1908, and was based on the position of the perennating buds.
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the world > life > [noun] > general characteristics of
habit1691
life form1896
1896 Bot. Gaz. 22 173 ‘Life-forms’ (epharmony) and ‘plant-societies’ (Pflanzenvereine) are defined.
1899 Nat. Sci. 14 109 Hence groups of similar adaptational form, ‘Lebensform’ of German authors, need by no means coincide with natural families or groups of species. For example, Empetrum and Erica, or Aloe and Agave, possess similar ‘life-forms’,..yet their floral characters indicate widely separate genetic affinities.
1913 Jrnl. Ecol. 1 16 (heading) Raunkiær's ‘life-forms’ and statistical methods.
1926 A. G. Tansley & T. F. Chipp Aims & Methods Study Vegetation ii. 11 Life form is the characteristic vegetative form of a species; in the first place whether it is a tree, shrub, herb, or a member of one of the lower group[s] of the plant kingdom.
1960 N. Polunin Introd. Plant Geogr. iii. 92 The ‘life-form’ or ‘growth-form’ of a plant is the form which its vegetative body produces as a result of all the life-processes, including those that are affected by the environment within the plant's life-time and are not heritable.
1971 D. W. Shimwell Descr. & Classif. of Vegetation iii. 74 Raunkiær..recognized fifteen main types of life form.
1990 Forest Resources of Arizona Dec. 30 Also included was an assessment of cover and heights of each of four life forms: seedlings, shrubs, forbs, and graminoids.
2003 Ann. Missouri Bot. Garden 90 577/2 Life forms and growth patterns, ultimately influencing the structure of the mature plant, are often ignored or little emphasized [in classification] because of the common opinion that all these characters are adaptive.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2009; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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