Microorganisms

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Minute biological entities, invisible to the naked eye, comprise a diverse range of life forms including bacteria, viruses, and fungi, and are integral to ecological and health systems
2. These tiny creatures, such as bacteria and fungi, can only be observed through magnification and are vital for processes like decomposition, disease, and biotechnology
3. Extremely small living beings that exist as bacteria, viruses, or fungi and are not detectable without magnification

Etymology: "Microorganism" is a plain technical compound: "micro-" from Ancient Greek "mikros" meaning "small," joined to "organism," which traces back through Latin "organum" and Greek "organon," meaning "tool" or "instrument," and ultimately to an Indo-European root for "work." An organism was, in a sense, a thing built from working parts, and the "-ism" ending comes from the Greek suffix that forms nouns of condition or state, which entered English through forms like "organism" itself. The word is a modern coinage, formed in English by attaching "micro-" to "organism." Its parts were all long established before they were combined, so the word reads as a straightforward description: small living things. The "micro-" prefix itself is a Greek-derived element that became productive in English for compounds describing smallness, most famously in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as science developed the tools to study tiny forms of life.

Synonyms: microbes, germs, bacteria, viruses, fungi