organism: Meaning and Definition of

or•gan•ism

1. a form of life composed of mutually interdependent parts that maintain various vital processes.
2. a form of life considered as an entity; an animal, plant, fungus, protistan, or moneran.
3. any organized body or system conceived of as analogous to a living being: the governmental organism.
4. any complex thing or system having properties and functions determined not only by the properties and relations of its individual parts, but by the character of the whole that they compose and by the relations of the parts to the whole.