survival of the fittest
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.97 in modern English
35
Scrabble Score
20
Letters
3
Syllables
12
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do much by artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and complexity of the coadaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may have been effected in the long course of time through nature's power of selection, that is by the survival of the fittest."
- "Welcome to this urban life / Welcome to my city / Survival of the fittest / Is never very pretty"
Etymology
Coined by English philosopher and political theorist Herbert Spencer in 1864 after reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, and used by Darwin himself in subsequent editions of that work. In the expression, fittest means “best fitted to the environment”, not “strongest, fastest, or most physically fit”.