[ad. mod. L. zōologia, mod. Gr. ζῳολογία (see note below), f. ζῴον animal + -λογία (see -LOGY). Cf. F. zoologie (18th c.).
The word was orig. used to denote that part of medical science which treats of the medicines or remedies obtainable from animals; e.g., in the title of T. Bateson’s translation of Johann Schröder’s Ζωολογια: or the History of Animals, as they are useful in physick and chirurgery, 1657; and in Sperling’s Zoologia Physica, 1661, a distinction is made between ‘zoologia medica’ and ‘zoologia sacra’; the first concerns animals ‘ut materiam medendi præbent,’ the second ‘ut ad Dei majestatem, ad vitia deponenda, et ad vitam corrigendam faciunt.’
The sense first recorded in English dictionaries is ‘a treatise concerning living creatures’ (Bailey, 1726) and is still the only one in Todd’s Johnson, 1818.]
The science which treats of animals, constituting one of the two branches (zoology and botany) of Natural History or Biology, and comprising many subordinate branches, as ornithology, ichthyology, entomology, etc.; also, a treatise on, or system of, this science.
1669. Rowland, trans. Schröder’s Chym. Disp., 506. The Fifth Book of the Chymical Dispensatory, called Zoology, treating of living Creatures. Zoology is a part of Pharmacy, that shews what Medicines are to be taken from Animals.
1726. Bailey, Zoology, a Treatise concerning living Creatures.
1728. Chambers, Cycl., s.v., Zoology makes a considerable Article in Natural History.
1753. Chambers’ Cycl., Suppl., Vacca, in zoology, the female of the ox-kind.
1766. Pennant (title), The British Zoology.
1833. Sir W. Hamilton, Discuss. (1852), 158. ‘Dogs bark’: this was erst of necessary matter; ‘dogs’ were then ‘all dogs.’… Since an observation of the dogs of Labrador (I think), the proposition, as in our zoologies, so in our logics, has fallen to contingent matter.
1867. Owen, in Brande & Cox, Dict. Sci., etc., s.v., The term Zoology is practically restricted to the science of the outward characters, habits, properties, and classification of animals.
1874. Green, Short Hist., ix. § 1. 599. John Ray was the first to raise zoology to the rank of a science.
