Word.ws English Dictionary

survival of the fittest

survival of the fittest noun: natural selection.

Noun

survival of the fittest (uncountable)

  1. (evolutionary theory) Natural selection.
    • Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do much by artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and complexity of the coadaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may have been...1872, Charles Darwin, “Natural Selection; or the Survival of the Fittest”, in The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, […], 6th edition, London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, page 85
    • Welcome to this urban life / Welcome to my city / Survival of the fittest / Is never very pretty2025, Suzanne Vega, Gerry Leonard, “Rats”, in Flying with Angels

survival of the fittest meaning in Tamil and Tagalog

survival of the fittest in Tamil

தக்கனபிழைத்துவாழ்தல், தகுதியன உய்தல், தக்கன உய்தல், தக்கனபிழைத்தல்

survival of the fittest in Tagalog

natural selection
lighay ng pinakaangkop, matira matibay

Origin of survival of the fittest

Coined by English philosopher and political theorist Herbert Spencer in 1864 after reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, and used by Darwin himself in subsequent editions of that work. In the expression, fittest means “best fitted to the environment”, not “strongest, fastest, or most physically fit”.

Questions about survival of the fittest

What does survival of the fittest mean?
Survival of the fittest means natural selection.
What is survival of the fittest in Tamil?
Survival of the fittest in Tamil is தக்கனபிழைத்துவாழ்தல், தகுதியன உய்தல், தக்கன உய்தல். See Survival of the fittest meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is survival of the fittest?
Survival of the fittest is a noun.

Words near survival of the fittest in the dictionary

  1. survival kit
  2. survival kits
  3. survival knife
  4. survival knives
  5. survival mode
  6. survival of the fittest
  7. survival rifle
  8. survival rifles
  9. survival sex
  10. survival statute
  11. survival statutes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: survival of the fittest (page history and authors); survival of the fittest (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: “survival of the fittest.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/survival_of_the_fittest. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.