In biology, morphology is a branch of bioscience dealing with the study of the form and structure of organisms and their specific structural features.

This includes aspects of the outward appearance (shape, structure, colour, pattern) as well as the form and structure of the internal parts like bones and organs. This is in contrast to physiology, which deals primarily with function. Morphology is a branch of life science dealing with the study of gross structure of an organism or Taxon and its component parts.

The word "morphology" is from the Greek μορφή, morphé = form and λόγος, lógos = word, study, research. The biological concept of morphology was developed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1790) and independently by the German anatomist and physiologist Karl Friedrich Burdach (1800).

In English-speaking countries, the term "molecular morphology" has been used for some time for describing the structure of compound molecules, such as polymers. and RNA. The term "gross morphology" refers to the collective structures or an organism as a whole as a general description of the form and structure of an organism, taking into account all of its structures without specifying an individual structure.

Morphology may mean:

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines. Among the most important topics are five unifying principles that can be said to be the fundamental axioms of modern biology:

Subdisciplines of biology are recognized on the basis of the scale at which organisms are studied and the methods used to study them: biochemistry examines the rudimentary chemistry of life; molecular biology studies the complex interactions of systems of biological molecules; cellular biology examines the basic building block of all life, the cell; physiology examines the physical and chemical functions of the tissues, organs, and organ systems of an organism; and ecology examines how various organisms interact and associate with their environment.

The term biology is derived from the Greek word βίος, bios, "life" and the suffix -λογία, -logia, "study of." It appears in German (as biologie) as early as 1791, and may be a back-formation from the older word amphibiology (meaning the study of amphibians) by deletion of the initial amphi-.