conservation

From Old French. By surface analysis, conserve +‎ -ation.

• IPA^(key): /ˌkɑnsə(ɹ)ˈveɪʃən/
• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

• Audio (Southern England)

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conservation (countable and uncountable, plural conservations)

1. The act of preserving, guarding, or protecting; the keeping (of a thing) in a safe or entire state; preservation.
2. Wise use of natural resources.
   • 1913, Robert Barr, chapter 4, in Lord Stranleigh Abroad‎:

     “My father had ideas about conservation long before the United States took it up. […] You preserve water in times of flood and freshet to be used for power or for irrigation throughout the year. …”

3. (biology) The discipline concerned with protection of biodiversity, the environment, and natural resources
4. (biology) Genes and associated characteristics of biological organisms that are unchanged by evolution, for example similar or identical nucleic acid sequences or proteins in different species descended from a common ancestor
5. (culture) The protection and care of cultural heritage, including artwork and architecture, as well as historical and archaeological artifacts
6. (physics) lack of change in a measurable property of an isolated physical system (conservation of energy, mass, momentum, electric charge, subatomic particles, and fundamental symmetries)

• conversation, nanovortices

Borrowed from Latin cōnservātiōnem.

• IPA^(key): /kɔ̃.sɛʁ.va.sjɔ̃/

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conservation f (plural conservations)

1. conservation

• loi de conservation
• loi de conservation de l’énergie

• “conservation”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• conversation