Word.ws English Dictionary

wastebasket taxon

wastebasket taxon noun: a taxon that exists only to classify organisms that do not fit anywhere else, being either paraphyletic or polyphyletic and therefore not considered valid under modern rules of taxonomy.

Noun

wastebasket taxon (plural wastebasket taxa)

  1. (informal) A taxon that exists only to classify organisms that do not fit anywhere else, being either paraphyletic or polyphyletic and therefore not considered valid under modern rules of taxonomy.
    • Extinct forms like Dimetrodon and Velociraptor are grouped with their living relatives. Therefore, the wastebasket taxon Reptilia is replaced by the clades Diapsida and Synapsida, and birds are classified as dinosaurs.2011, Matt Cartmill, Fred H. Smith, The Human Lineage, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN

Forms of wastebasket taxon

pluralwastebasket taxa

Questions about wastebasket taxon

What does wastebasket taxon mean?
Wastebasket taxon means a taxon that exists only to classify organisms that do not fit anywhere else, being either paraphyletic or polyphyletic and therefore not considered valid under modern rules of taxonomy.
What part of speech is wastebasket taxon?
Wastebasket taxon is a noun.
What is the plural of wastebasket taxon?
The plural of wastebasket taxon is wastebasket taxa.

Words near wastebasket taxon in the dictionary

  1. waste-time
  2. waste-water
  3. wasteable
  4. wastebasket
  5. wastebasket taxa
  6. wastebasket taxon
  7. wastebasketed
  8. wastebasketing
  9. wastebaskets
  10. wastebin
  11. wastebins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wastebasket taxon (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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