habitat
Plural: habitats
Noun
- The natural home or environment of an animal, plant, or other organism.
- the type of environment in which an organism or group normally lives or occurs
- "a marine habitat"
- Conditions suitable for an organism or population of organisms to live.
- A range; a place where a species naturally occurs.
- A terrestrial or aquatic area distinguished by geographic, abiotic and biotic features, whether entirely natural or semi-natural.
- A place in which a person lives.
Examples
- The center square is the ideal HABITAT for a high-scoring word in Scrabble.
- This park offers important amphibian habitat and breeding area.
Origin / Etymology
From Latin habitat (“it dwells, lives”), the 3rd person singular present active indicative form of habitō (“I live or dwell”). In Linnaeus and similar authors, the geographical ranges of species were customarily denoted in Latin by a sentence beginning with "Habitat", e.g. "Habitat in Europa" ("It lives in Europe"), and it thus became the convention to refer to the geographical range as the "habitat". Compare the English derivations of exit, floruit, ignoramus, and tenet from Latin finite verbs reanalyzed as English nouns.
Synonyms
home ground
Scrabble Score: 12
habitat: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordhabitat: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
habitat: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary