biodiversity
noun
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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
Moná Thomas, PEOPLE, 27 Nov. 2025
Climate, biodiversity, and land degradation, long managed in separate silos, were finally treated as one system.
—Paul Polman, Time, 25 Nov. 2025
In August 2019, then-Indonesian President Joko Widodo said that the country’s capital would move to Nusantara, located 1,200 miles away in Borneo, which has some of the world’s highest levels of biodiversity.
—Jay Ganglani, NBC news, 25 Nov. 2025
Evening presentations cover culture, conservation challenges, and biodiversity.
—Natalie Preddie, Travel + Leisure, 24 Nov. 2025
See All Example Sentences for biodiversity
Cite this Entry
“Biodiversity.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/biodiversity. Accessed 5 Dec. 2025.
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biodiversity
noun
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