biology

Borrowed from New Latin biologia (1766), itself from Ancient Greek βίος (bíos, “bio-, life”) + -λογία (-logía, “-logy, branch of study, to speak”). By surface analysis, bio- + -logy. In English, first attested in the modern meaning in the work of English physician Thomas Beddoes in 1799. The term is also recorded in the sense of a biographical history in the work of Dudley Loftus in 1686, but this is considered by the Oxford English Dictionary to be an isolated use. The modern Greek βιολογία (viología) is borrowed from the English term and French biologie via international scientific vocabulary. Piecewise doublet of zoology.