bio-

UK/ˈbaɪˌəʊ/US/ˈbaɪˌoʊ/

bio- is the combining form of life.

bio- is the combining form of biological.

Meaning of life

life (usually uncountable, plural lives)

(usually) The state of organisms preceding their death, characterized by biological processes such as metabolism and reproduction and distinguishing them from inanimate objects; the state of being alive and living.
- I want my kids to live a good life. He gave up on life.
1. (usually) The status possessed by any of a number of entities, including animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and sometimes viruses, which have the properties of replication and metabolism.
(usually) The animating principle or force that keeps an inorganic thing or concept metaphorically alive (dynamic, relevant, etc) and makes it a “living document”, “living constitution”, etc.
- The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.1881, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., The Common Law
(usually) Lifeforms, generally or collectively.
- It's life, but not as we know it. She discovered plant life on the planet. The rover discovered signs of life on the alien world.
(countable, usually) A living being; the fact of a particular individual being alive. (Chiefly when indicating individuals were lost (died) or saved.)
- Many lives were lost during the war. Her quick thinking saved many dogs' lives.
(usually) Existence.
- Life is meaningless and we are all going to die.

biological (not comparable)

Of or relating to biology.
- He draws eclectically on studies of baboons, descriptive anthropological accounts of hunter-gatherer societies and, in a few cases, the fossil record. With this biological framework in place, Corning endeavors to show that the capitalist system as currently practiced in the United States and...2012 March-April, John T. Jost, “Social Justice: Is It in Our Nature (and Our Future)?”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, archived from the original on 21 Jun 2017, page 162
Relating to anatomy; anatomic, anatomical.
- Many who oppose transgender rights believe that gender is determined solely by biological sex. But, biological sex isn’t as straightforward as they likely think, and there is no one parameter that makes a person biologically male or female. In fact, many conditions make assigning a biological sex...2020 June 15, Kim Elsesser, “The Myth Of Biological Sex”, in Forbes
Related by consanguinity, especially as to parents and children.
- biological mother
(nonstandard, proscribed, non-native speakers' English) Organic (grown without agrochemicals).
- The market for cosmetics with natural ingredients in which the body shop is so successful is still a small one, as is the market for biological food products (1 per cent in the Netherlands).2013, J. Hemmelskamp, K. Rennings, F. Leone, editors, Innovation-Oriented Environmental Regulation: Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Analysis, page 49

From Ancient Greek βιο- (bio-), combining form and stem of βίος (bíos, “life”). By surface analysis, bi- (“life”) + -o-.

Adapted from Wiktionary: bio- (page history and authors); life (page history and authors); biological (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-bio-.wav.

Cite this entry: “bio-.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bio-. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.