March 18, 2015 - 18:13
Interdependence
OED:
The fact or condition of depending each upon the other; mutual dependence.
Urban Dictionary:
A relation in which independent objects or individuals are dependent on each other, meaning that they're affected reciprocally.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English:
a situation in which people or things depend on each other
History: This word comes from the Latin prefix inter- meaning “between” and Middle French word dépendance meaning “dependence.”
Home
OED:
1) The place where a person or animal dwells.
2) The place where one lives or was brought up, with reference to the feelings of belonging, comfort, etc., associated with it.
3) A refuge, a sanctuary; a place or region to which one naturally belongs or where one feels at ease.
Urban Dictionary:
A word that means something different to each person who uses it. A person's home can be the place where they live, the place they grew up, or the place where the people they care about live. In the case of some people, home is a variable concept, changing dependant on the placement of another person or object, or a person may even consider his or her own body the only 'true' home.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English:
1) the house, apartment, or place where you live
2) the place where you came from or where you usually live, especially when this is the place where you feel happy and comfortable
3) to feel comfortable in a place or with a person
History: This word comes from the Old English ham meaning “dwelling, house, estate, village,” which is from the Proto-Germanic haimaz (cognates: Old Frisian hem "home, village," Old Norse heimr "residence, world," heima "home," Danish hjem, Middle Dutch heem, German heim "home," Gothic haims "village"), which is from the Proto-Indo-European root tkei- which means "to settle, dwell, be home" (cognates: Sanskrit kseti "abides, dwells," Armenian shen "inhabited," Greek kome, Lithuanian kaimas "village;" Old Church Slavonic semija "domestic servants").
Ecosystem
OED:
A biological system composed of all the organisms found in a particular physical environment, interacting with it and with each other. Also in extended use: a complex system resembling this.
Urban Dictionary:
An ecological community together with its environment, functioning as a unit.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English:
all the animals and plants in a particular area, and the way in which they are related to each other and to their environment
History: Possibly coined by English ecologist Sir Arthur George Tansley in 1935, this word comes from the word-forming element eco-, referring to the environment and man’s realtion to it (abstracted from ecology), and the Latin word systema meaning “an arrangement,” which is from the Greek systema meaning “organized whole, a whole compounded of parts,” from the stem of synistanai meaning “to place together, organize, form in order,” which comes from syn meaning “together” plus the root of histanai meaning “cause to stand,” from the Proto-Indo-European root sta- meaning “to stand.”