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physical anthropology

physical anthropology noun: the branch of anthropology that studies physical aspects of human beings and closely related species.

Noun

physical anthropology (uncountable)

  1. The branch of anthropology that studies physical aspects of human beings and closely related species.
    • In the meantime I must briefly refer to the doubt that has often been raised about the utility of minute measurements, deep studies of physical anthropology, statistical tables, and elaborate maps,1890, Gerson Da Cunah, “The nasal index in biological anthropology”, in The Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay, page 533
    • By the end of the century, the APS’s membership included the leaders of the American anthropological establishment, whose primary investigative interests were the ethnography, linguistics, archeology, and physical anthropology of the American Indian, within a theoretical structure that was...1997, Jacob W. Gruber, “American Philosophical Society”, in History of Physical Anthropology, page 64

Synonyms of physical anthropology

Origin of physical anthropology

Compound of physical + anthropology. Attested from the 19th century.

Questions about physical anthropology

What does physical anthropology mean?
Physical anthropology means the branch of anthropology that studies physical aspects of human beings and closely related species.
What part of speech is physical anthropology?
Physical anthropology is a noun.

Words near physical anthropology in the dictionary

  1. physic garden
  2. physic gardens
  3. physic nut
  4. physic nuts
  5. physical
  6. physical anthropology
  7. physical break
  8. physical breaks
  9. physical change
  10. physical changes
  11. physical chemistry

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: physical anthropology (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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