taxonomy
n.a system for naming and organizing things into groups based on how they are similar. It is often used in science to group animals and plants.
n.a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical one, used for the systematic categorization of organisms or concepts. Often implies a formal or scientific framework.
“The library uses a complex taxonomy to organize its books.”
“Biologists are constantly updating the taxonomy of marine life as new genetic evidence comes to light.”
“The software developer created a custom taxonomy to tag and retrieve thousands of digital assets based on their resolution, format, and licensing status.”
Uncountable when referring to the science of classification; countable when referring to a specific system of categories.
“Rubin Observatory is expected to find many more stellar streams within our galaxy , which will help astronomers build a taxonomy of stream features and—hopefully—discover fingerprints of dark matter.”
“They were engaged in what the French sociologist Roger Caillois, in his taxonomy Man, Play and Games (1958), called paidia : free, spontaneous, unstructured play.”
Borrowed from French taxonomie. By surface analysis, taxo- + -nomy.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.