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biogenesis

bi·o·ge·ne·sisUK /bʌɪə(ʊ)ˈdʒɛnəsɪs/noun

biogenesis is a noun meaning “The principle that living organisms are produced only from other living organisms” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled B-I-O-G-E-N-E-S-I-S and has 5 syllables (bi·o·ge·ne·sis), and it appears about once in every 4 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of biogenesis is biogeneses.

What does biogenesis mean?

noun

  1. 1

    The principle that living organisms are produced only from other living organisms.

  2. 2

    Biosynthesis.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce biogenesis?

  • UK /bʌɪə(ʊ)ˈdʒɛnəsɪs/
  • UK /baɪə-/
  • UK /baɪoʊ-/

Biogenesis has 5 syllables, split bi·o·ge·ne·sis in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q7979-Pink_Bee-biogenesis.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of biogenesis

  • biogeneses plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is biogenesis?

Biogenesis appears about once in every 4 million words in written English, the 59,387th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Biogenesis in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense principle:

LanguageWords
Frenchbiogenèse
GermanBiogenese
Portuguesebiogênese, biogénese
Spanishbiogénesis

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does biogenesis come from?

From Ancient Greek βῐ́ος (bĭ́os, “life”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gʷeyh₃- (“to live”)) + γένεσις (génesis, “origin, source; manner of birth; creation”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ǵénh₁tis (“birth; production”)). The words biogenesis and abiogenesis were both coined by English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) in 1870 (see the quotation).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).