biodiversity
noun
Did you know?
Biodiversity may become the rallying call for the next decade, wrote David Wake in the journal Science in 1989. Indeed, biodiversity is a word you're likely to encounter in writing about ecology and the environment today. But when Wake used it, "biodiversity" was still a relatively new addition to the English language, having first appeared in writing in the mid-1980s. Of course, the roots of biodiversity are much older. It evolved from a commingling of the descendants of the Greek noun bios, which means "mode of life," and the Latin verb divertere, which means "to turn aside" or "to go different ways."
Examples of biodiversity in a Sentence
Jamie Carter, Forbes.com, 23 May 2026
Costa Rica’s Deep Sea Costa Rica’s biodiversity is the stuff of nature documentaries, but most travelers only ever see one slice of it at a time.
—Ritu Upadhyay, Footwear News, 23 May 2026
These billowing grasslands, rising up to heights of 10 feet, were once the largest continuous ecosystem on the continent, with more biodiversity than any place in the world aside from the Amazon rainforest.
—Matt Kirouac, Travel + Leisure, 20 May 2026
Montefalcone and Oddenino were in the Maldives on an official scientific mission to monitor marine environments and study the effects of climate change on tropical biodiversity, the University of Genoa said in a statement Friday.
—CBS News, 18 May 2026
See All Example Sentences for biodiversity
Cite this Entry
“Biodiversity.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/biodiversity. Accessed 30 May. 2026.
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biodiversity
noun
