evolution

Noun

evolution (countable and uncountable, plural evolutions)

1. A manoeuvre of troops or ships.
   • Mean while, he never failed to be present, when any regiment, or corps of men, were drawn out to be exercised and reviewed, and accompanied them in all their evolutions […].1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC
   • Major Holroyd, who acted as the General, was extremely polite, and attentive, and came to us between every evolution, to explain and talk over the manoeuvres.1779, Frances Burney, Journals & Letters, Penguin, published 2001, page 117
2. A turning movement, especially of the body.
   • Our necromancer […] taking up his wand, waved it around his head in a very mysterious motion, with a view of intimidating these forward visitants, who, far from being awed by this sort of evolution, became more and more obstreperous […].1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC
   • It was a critical instant: the pirouette -- it would fail, she feared. … the rapid whirl achieved in exact time, the whole evolution executed to perfection.1869, anonymous author, Miss Langley's Will
3. (obsolete) A turned or twisted shape; an involution, a complex or intricate shape.
   • ‘It is not in the showy evolutions of buildings, but in the multiplicity of human habitations which are crouded together, that the wonderful immensity of London consists.’1791, James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, Oxford, published 2008, page 298
4. (archaic) The act or process of unfolding or opening out; the progression of events in regular succession.
   • The world […] might have been gradually produced from very small beginnings […] rather than by a sudden evolution of the whole by the Almighty fiat.1794–1796, Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia; or, The Laws of Organic Life, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], →OCLC
5. The opening out of a curve; now more generally, the gradual transformation of a curve by a change of the conditions generating it.
6. (historical) The extraction of a root from a given power.
7. The act or an instance of giving off gas; emission.
   • Allantoxaidin is decomposed on heating, with evolution of ammonia and cyanic acid.1879, Journal, volume 36, Great Britain: Chemical Society, page 227
8. Development; the act or result of developing what was implicit in an idea, argument etc.
   • The ongoing evolution of Lolita subculture fashion includes, among other things, the ballet style.
   • Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego.2005, Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
9. A process of gradual change in a given system, subject, product etc., especially from simpler to more complex forms.
   • Among other forms of change, the evolution of transportation has involved modification, diversification, convergence, divergence, hybridization, differentiation, and naturally, selection.
   • By some paradoxical evolution rancour and intolerance have been established in the vanguard of primitive Christianity. Mrs. Spoker, in common with many of the stricter disciples of righteousness, was as inclement in demeanour as she was cadaverous in aspect.1921, Ben Travers, chapter 4, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC
10. The transformation of animals, plants and other living things into different forms (now understood as a change in genetic composition) by the accumulation of changes over successive generations.
    • […]and thus he [Lamarck] was inclined to assert the priority of the types of marine animals to those of the terrestrial, and to fancy, for example, that the testacea of the ocean existed first, until some of them, by gradual evolution, were improved into those inhabiting the land.1832, Charles Lyell, chapter I, in Principles of Geology […] , volume II, London: John Murray, page 11
    • [Some books have] made the erroneous assumption that the important thing in evolution is the good of the species (or the group) rather than the good of the individual (or the gene).1976, Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene