From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishorganismor‧gan‧is‧m /ˈɔːɡənɪzəm $ ˈɔːr-/ ●○○ noun [countable] 1 LIVING/ALIVEan animal, plant, human, or any other living thing All living organisms have to adapt to changes in environmental conditions. Genes operate together in determining the characteristics of an individual organism.2 SYSTEMa system made up of parts that are dependent on each other A society is essentially an organism.
Examples from the Corpus
organism• Questions about life are conventionally questions about organisms.• A network, or society, of very simpleminded decision-making centers like these formed an organism that exhibited remarkable agility and adaptability.• Art is not a machine, he wrote, and it is not an organism.• Ecologies and organisms have always been grown.• Food poisoning is caused by a bacterial organism.• The human body is a very complex organism.• Genetic engineers manipulate living organisms such as cells or bacteria to create products which fight disease.• In this respect they share a property of living organisms.• Obviously, organisms that form beliefs based on accurate perceptions of the environment will survive better than organisms that form inaccurate beliefs.• From the start, resistant organisms have appeared.individual organism• The rivalry between individual organism and group of organisms for the vehicle role, being a real rivalry, can be settled.• That is, Gaian homeostasis originates in the local activity of individual organisms.• By 1841, he had very probably worked out, also, his later theory of individual organism generation: pangenesis.• The population dynamics emerges from the interactions among the individual organisms.• Because the individual organisms vary, some are bound to be better able to survive in particular circumstances than others.• As it happens the outcome, in my view, is a decisive victory for the individual organism.• In this case expression of the character evidently depends on the gene dosage present in the individual organism.• This is because it is second nature for them to pose their questions at the level of the individual organism. 