The Greek root -phil- originates from the Greek word meaning "love". For example, philosophy (along with the Greek root -soph- meaning "wisdom") is the study of human customs and the significance of life. One of the most common uses of the root -phil- is with philias.
A philia is the love or obsession with a particular thing or subject. The suffix -philia is used to specify the love or obsession with something more specific. It is somewhat antonymic to -phobia . Philias can be biological (e.g. rhizophilia, preference for living on roots) or chemical (e.g. chromophilous, materials that stain easily), or can be a hobby/liking (e.g. icthyophilia, love for fish).
Philia (φιλία) as a Greek word for love refers to brotherly love, including friendship and affection. This contrasts to the Greek terms Eros, or sexual/romantic love, and agape, or detached, spiritual love. However, English usage differs in some cases from the etymological use, and several of these words refer in English not to brotherly love but to sexual attraction.
The suffix -phile (or, in a few cases, -philiac) applies to someone who has one of these philia. It is the antonym of -phobe.
Phil- (philo-) may also be used as a prefix with a similar meaning.
A microorganism, or microbe, is an organism of microscopic size, which may exist in its single-celled form or as a colony of cells.
A paraphilia is an experience of recurring or intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, places, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals. It has also been defined as a sexual interest in anything other than a legally consenting human partner. Paraphilias are contrasted with normophilic ("normal") sexual interests, though the definition of what makes a sexual interest normal or atypical remains controversial.
A thermophile is an organism—a type of extremophile—that thrives at relatively high temperatures, between 41 and 122 °C. Many thermophiles are archaea, though some of them are bacteria and fungi. Thermophilic eubacteria are suggested to have been among the earliest bacteria.
Klismaphilia, from the Greek words κλύσμα and φιλία ("love"), is a paraphilia involving enjoyment of, and sexual arousal from, enemas.
Medical fetishism refers to several sexual fetishes in which participants derive sexual pleasure from medical scenarios including objects, practices, environments, and situations of a medical or clinical nature. In sexual roleplay, a hospital or medical scene involves the sex partners assuming the roles of doctors, nurses, surgeons and patients to act out specific or general medical fetishes. Medical fantasy is a genre in pornography, though the fantasy may not necessarily involve pornography or sexual activity.
This glossary of ecology is a list of definitions of terms and concepts in ecology and related fields. For more specific definitions from other glossaries related to ecology, see Glossary of biology, Glossary of evolutionary biology, and Glossary of environmental science.
Ephebophilia is the primary sexual interest in mid-to-late adolescents, generally ages 15 to 19. The term was originally used in the late 19th to mid-20th century. It is one of a number of sexual preferences across age groups subsumed under the technical term chronophilia.Ephebophilia strictly denotes the preference for mid-to-late adolescent sexual partners, not the mere presence of some level of sexual attraction. It is not a psychiatric diagnosis.
Hebephilia is the strong, persistent sexual interest by adults in pubescent children who are in early adolescence, typically ages 11–14 and showing Tanner stages 2 to 3 of physical development. It differs from pedophilia, and from ephebophilia. While individuals with a sexual preference for adults may have some sexual interest in pubescent-aged individuals, researchers and clinical diagnoses have proposed that hebephilia is characterized by a sexual preference for pubescent rather than adult partners.
Agalmatophilia is a paraphilia involving sexual attraction to a statue, doll, mannequin, or other similar figurative object. The attraction may include a desire for actual sexual contact with the object, a fantasy of having sexual encounters with an animate or inanimate instance of the preferred object, the act of watching encounters between such objects, or sexual pleasure gained from thoughts of being transformed or transforming another into the preferred object. Agalmatophilia overlaps Pygmalionism, the love for an object of one's own creation, named after the myth of Pygmalion. Agalmatophilia is a form of object sexuality. English poet Edmund Spenser wrote of Pygmalionism in some of his works.
Xenophilia or xenophily is the love for, attraction to, or appreciation of foreign people, manners, customs, or cultures. It is the antonym of xenophobia or xenophoby. The word is a modern coinage from the Greek "xenos" (ξένος) and "philia" (φιλία), though the word itself is not found in classical Greek.
Vorarephilia is a paraphilia characterized by the erotic desire to be consumed by, or to personally consume, another person or creature, or an erotic attraction to the process of eating in general practice. Soft vore fantasies are separated from sexual fantasies of cannibalism, also referred to as "hard vore", because the soft vore victim is normally swallowed alive and whole. The word vorarephilia is derived from the Latin vorare, and Ancient Greek φιλία.
In biology and ecology, abiotic components or abiotic factors are non-living chemical and physical parts of the environment that affect living organisms and the functioning of ecosystems. Abiotic factors and the phenomena associated with them underpin biology as a whole. They affect a plethora of species, in all forms of environmental conditions, such as marine or land animals. Humans can make or change abiotic factors in a species' environment. For instance, fertilizers can affect a snail's habitat, or the greenhouse gases which humans utilize can change marine pH levels.
Acrotomophilia is a paraphilia in which an individual expresses strong sexual interest in amputees. It is a counterpart to apotemnophilia, the desire to be an amputee.
Environmental hazards are those hazards that affect biomes or ecosystems. Well known examples include oil spills, water pollution, slash and burn deforestation, air pollution, ground fissures, and build-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Physical exposure to environmental hazards is usually involuntary
A semiochemical, from the Greek σημεῖον (semeion), meaning "signal", is a chemical substance or mixture released by an organism that affects the behaviors of other individuals. Semiochemical communication can be divided into two broad classes: communication between individuals of the same species (intraspecific) or communication between different species (interspecific).
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to ecology:
A xerophile is an extremophilic organism that can grow and reproduce in conditions with a low availability of water, also known as water activity.
In microbiology, in the context of a sterilization procedure, the D-value or decimal reduction time is the time required, at a given condition or set of conditions, to achieve a one-log reduction, that is, to kill 90% of relevant microorganisms. A D-value is denoted with the capital letter "D". Thus, after an exposure time of 1 D, only 10% of the organisms originally present in a microbial colony would remain. The term originated in assessments of microbes' thermal resistance and in thermal death time analysis; however, it now has analogous uses in other microbial resistance and death rate applications, such as for ethylene oxide and radiation processing.
This glossary of biology terms is a list of definitions of fundamental terms and concepts used in biology, the study of life and of living organisms. It is intended as introductory material for novices; for more specific and technical definitions from sub-disciplines and related fields, see Glossary of cell biology, Glossary of genetics, Glossary of evolutionary biology, Glossary of ecology, Glossary of environmental science and Glossary of scientific naming, or any of the organism-specific glossaries in Category:Glossaries of biology.