habitat

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The natural place where a plant or animal lives.

   The destruction of the forest threatens the tigers' habitat.

2. 2
   noun

   The natural conditions that an animal or plant needs to live.

   The park provides an important habitat for rare frogs.

Etymology tree Latin habitatbor. English habitat From Latin habitat (“it dwells, lives”), the 3rd person singular present active indicative form of habitō (“to live or dwell”). In Linnaeus and similar authors, the geographical ranges of species were customarily denoted in Latin by a sentence beginning with "Habitat", e.g. "Habitat in Europa" ("It lives in Europe"), and it thus became the convention to refer to the geographical range as the "habitat". Compare the English derivations of exit, floruit, ignoramus, and tenet from Latin finite verbs reanalyzed as English nouns.

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