orthologous
adjective
orthologous is an adjective meaning “Exhibiting orthology; having been separated by a speciation event. Usually while retaining the same function” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled O-R-T-H-O-L-O-G-O-U-S, and it appears about once in every 28 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does orthologous mean?
adjective
- 1
Exhibiting orthology; having been separated by a speciation event. Usually while retaining the same function.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is orthologous?
Orthologous appears about once in every 28 million words in written English, the 159,707th 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).
Orthologous in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense having been separated by a speciation event:
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 orthologous come from?
From orthology + -ous.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).