Word.ws English Dictionary

homo sapiens

homo sapiens noun: a human being (Homo sapiens). Also the plural of homo sapien.

Noun (1)

homo sapiens (plural homo sapiens or homines sapientes)

  1. A human being (Homo sapiens).
    • […] let’s take a look at the scenery tell me what do you think when you see all this pile-up of people these multitudes of man this humongosity of humanity this superabundance of homo sapiens ah well what I see is we’re in the barrio poor folk’s part of town where you find the masses […]1992, Miguel Méndez, “Ledras y latrillos/Bricks and Belles Ladders”, in Charles M. Tatum, editor, New Chicana/Chicano Writing, volume 2, Tucson, Ariz.: The University of Arizona Press, →ISBN, →ISSN...
    • According to data from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is over 415 parts per million (ppm), far higher than at any point in the last 800,000 years, since before the evolution of homo sapiens.2019 May 13, James Griffiths, “There is more CO2 in the atmosphere today than any point since the evolution of humans”, in CNN

Noun (2) capitalized: Homo sapiens

Homo sapiens

  1. (plural) plural of Homo sapien.

Also used as

homo sapiens is also the plural of homo sapien.

Forms of homo sapiens

pluralhomo sapiens
pluralhomines sapientes

Origin of homo sapiens

Learned borrowing from New Latin homō sapiēns, from Latin homō (“human being”) + sapiēns (“wise, sensible, judicious”).

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Questions about homo sapiens

What does homo sapiens mean?
Homo sapiens means a human being (Homo sapiens).
What part of speech is homo sapiens?
Homo sapiens is a noun.
What is the plural of homo sapiens?
The plural of homo sapiens is homo sapiens.

Words near homo sapiens in the dictionary

  1. homo oeconomicus
  2. homo politicus
  3. Homo reciprocans
  4. homo sacer
  5. homo sapien
  6. homo sapiens
  7. Homo Sovieticus
  8. Homo Superior
  9. Homo superioris
  10. Homo Superiors
  11. homo-

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: homo sapiens (page history and authors); Homo sapiens (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.

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