zoology
(zəʊˈɒlədʒɪ, pop. zuːˈɒlədʒɪ)
[ad. mod.L. zōologia, mod. Gr. ζῳολογία (see note below), f. ζῷον animal + -λογία (see -logy). Cf. F. zoologie (18th c.).
The word was orig. used to denote that part of medical science which treats of the medicines or remedies obtainable from animals; e.g. in the title of T. Bateson's translation of Johann Schröder's Ζωολογια: or the History of Animals, as they are useful in physick and chirurgery, 1657; and in Sperling's Zoologia Physica, 1661, a distinction is made between ‘zoologia medica’ and ‘zoologia sacra’; the first concerns animals ‘ut materiam medendi præbent’, the second ‘ut ad Dei majestatem, ad vitia deponenda, et ad vitam corrigendam faciunt.’
The sense first recorded in English dictionaries is ‘a treatise concerning living creatures’ (Bailey 1726) and is still the only one in Todd's Johnson, 1818.]
The science which treats of animals, constituting one of the two branches (zoology and botany) of Natural History or Biology, and comprising many subordinate branches, as ornithology, ichthyology, entomology, etc.; also, a treatise on, or system of, this science.
| 1669 Rowland tr. Schröder's Chym. Disp. 506 The Fifth Book of Chymical Dispensatory, called Zoology, treating of living Creatures. Zoology is a Part of Pharmacy, that shews what Medicines are to be taken from Animals. 1726 Bailey, Zoology, a Treatise concerning living Creatures. 1728 Chambers Cycl. s.v., Zoology makes a considerable Article in Natural History. 1753 Chambers' Cycl. Suppl., Vacca, in zoology, the female of the ox-kind. 1766 Pennant (title) The British Zoology. 1833 Sir W. Hamilton Discuss. (1852) 158 ‘Dogs bark’: this was erst of necessary matter; ‘dogs’ were then ‘all dogs’... Since an observation of the dogs of Labrador (I think), the proposition, as in our zoologies, so in our logics, has fallen to contingent matter. 1867 Owen in Brande & Cox Dict. Sci. etc. s.v., The term Zoology is practically restricted to the science of the outward characters, habits, properties, and classification of animals. 1874 Green Short Hist. ix. §i. 599 John Ray was the first to raise zoology to the rank of a science. |