English Explanatory Dictionary

survival of the fittest

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. Natural selection.

Word forms

survival of the fittest

Etymology

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”.

Related words

Darwinianism Darwinian
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on S Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary