Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The scientific naming of species whereby each species receives a Latin or Latinized name of two parts, the first indicating the genus and the second being the specific epithet. For example, Juglans regia is the English walnut; Juglans nigra, the black walnut.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun biology, taxonomy The
scientific system ofnaming eachspecies oforganism with aLatinized name in two parts; the first is thegenus , and is written with an initialcapital letter ; the second is somespecific epithet that distinguishes the species within the genus. By convention, the whole name is typeset initalics . The genus part is oftenabbreviated to its initial letter e.g. H. sapiens for Homo sapiens
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chained_bear commented on the word binomial nomenclature
A system of naming plants and animals in which each species receives a name of two terms, of which the first identifies the genus to which it belongs and the second the species itself. Developed by Linnaeus, if I recall correctly, and if I don't, well... big deal. :)
October 27, 2007