wastebasket taxon
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.94 in modern English
32
Scrabble Score
16
Letters
5
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A taxon that exists only to classify organisms that do not fit anywhere else, being either paraphyletic or polyphyletic and therefore not considered valid under modern rules of taxonomy.
Informal
Example Sentences
- "Extinct forms like Dimetrodon and Velociraptor are grouped with their living relatives. Therefore, the wastebasket taxon Reptilia is replaced by the clades Diapsida and Synapsida, and birds are classified as dinosaurs."