Taxonomists

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Researchers dedicated to the classification of living organisms based on traits and evolutionary links
2. Specialists who systematically categorize species by their characteristics and ancestral ties
3. Experts who study and organize living things into groups based on shared features and evolutionary history

Etymology: Taxonomists are the people who do taxonomy, and the word is a plain formation: "taxonomy" with the suffix "-ist" added, meaning a practitioner of the field. The "-ist" ending was attached to many words to name people who practise a discipline or follow a system, so the pattern is ordinary, even if the word is less familiar than the field it names. The base word "taxonomy" is itself built from Greek roots. "Taxis" meant arrangement or order, and "nomos" meant law or rule, so taxonomy is literally the rule-governed arrangement of things. The word was later applied to the scientific classification of living things, the sense that now gives taxonomists their work: grouping organisms by shared features and evolutionary relationships. Because the word is a straightforward combination of a discipline name and a practitioner suffix, its history is simply the history of its base. The useful detail is the meaning it carries: the people who sort living things into groups, not the people who sort things in general.

Synonyms: classifiers, biologists, systematists, categorists, nomenclaturists