anatomy

Noun

anatomy (countable and uncountable, plural anatomies)

1. The science that deals with the form and structure of organic bodies; anatomical structure or organization.
   • Animal anatomy is also called zootomy; vegetable anatomy, phytotomy; and human anatomy, anthropotomy.
   • Let the muscles be well inserted and bound together, according to the knowledge of them which is given us by anatomy.1695, C[harles] A[lphonse] du Fresnoy, translated by John Dryden, De Arte Graphica. The Art of Painting, […], London: […] J[ohn] Heptinstall for W. Rogers, […], →OCLC
2. The study of the parts of any organized body, to discover their situation, structure, and economy.
3. The physical or functional organization of an organism, or part of it.
   • I went to the Venice beach body-building competition and noticed the competitor from Athens, and let me tell you, that's what I call classic Greek anatomy.
   • The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are...2013 August 3, “The machine of a new soul”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847
4. (countable) A treatise or book on anatomy.
5. (colloquial) The form of an individual.
6. (euphemistic) The human body, especially in reference to the genitals.
   • His extraordinary suggestion is that the future PM inserted a private part of his anatomy into the animal's mouth.2015 September 20, Michael Ashcroft, Isabel Oakeshott, “Drugs, debauchery and the making of an extraordinary Prime Minister: For years rumours have dogged him. Now, the truth about the shockingly...
   • On the debate stage days later, Trump wanted all of America to know there was "no problem" with the size of his hands — or any other part of his anatomy.2016 December 28, Jessica Taylor, “11 Times Donald Trump Looked Like He Was Done For”, in NPR
7. (archaic, countable) A skeleton or other dead body.
   • So did the Ægyptians, who in the middest of their banquetings, and in the full of their greatest cheere, caused the anatomy of a dead man to be brought before them, as a memorandum and warning to their guests., Folio Society, 2006, vol.1 p.68
8. (broadly) The act of dividing anything, corporeal or intellectual, for the purpose of examining its parts.
   • the anatomy of a discourse
   • the anatomy of love

   Synonyms:

   analysis