Ecosystem
Etymology
From Greek "oikos" (house, household) plus "system," coined by the ecologist Arthur Tansley in 1935 to insist that organisms and their environment form a single interacting unit. The prefix has since spread to “business ecosystem” and beyond.
noun · /EE-koh-sis-tem/
A community of living things together with their physical environment, interacting as a functioning whole.
What it names
The unit at which life and its surroundings must be understood together, so you cannot pull out one species without rippling through the rest.
Example
Reintroducing wolves reshaped the whole Yellowstone ecosystem, from the deer to the riverbanks the deer had overgrazed.
Related idea
An ecosystem includes the non-living environment — soil, water, climate; a food chain traces just one path of who eats whom within it. The ecosystem is the whole web and its stage, not a single strand.
noun · /EE-koh-sis-tem/
Figuratively, a network of interdependent parts — companies, products, or people — that function together.
What it names
an interconnected business or technology environment.
Example
Apps thrive or die within the platform’s ecosystem.
Related idea
Treats a market like a living community of mutually dependent organisms.