Word.ws English Dictionary

selfish gene

selfish gene noun: the gene regarded as the primary driver and beneficiary of the evolutionary process.

Noun

selfish gene (plural selfish genes)

  1. (evolutionary theory) The gene regarded as the primary driver and beneficiary of the evolutionary process.

Forms of selfish gene

pluralselfish genes

Origin of selfish gene

Coined by British biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976 in his book The Selfish Gene.

Questions about selfish gene

What does selfish gene mean?
Selfish gene means the gene regarded as the primary driver and beneficiary of the evolutionary process.
What part of speech is selfish gene?
Selfish gene is a noun.
What is the plural of selfish gene?
The plural of selfish gene is selfish genes.

Words near selfish gene in the dictionary

  1. selfinjective
  2. selfinteraction
  3. selfinteractions
  4. selfish
  5. selfish DNA
  6. selfish gene
  7. selfish genes
  8. Selfish Seventies
  9. selfisher
  10. selfishest
  11. selfishly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: selfish gene (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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