selection
Pluralselections
- 1A range of varied items taken from a larger group or collection.
The gallery displayed a selection of paintings from the 1920s.
Our menu features a fine selection of local wines.
UsageUsually a selection of + a plural noun, often with wide, good or fine: a wide selection of cheeses.
Similarrange, assortment, variety, array, collection
- 2The process or act of choosing something or someone from a number of options.
The selection of jurors began early in the morning.
Her selection for the lead role surprised everyone on the committee.
UsageUsually the selection of a captain or jurors; someone chosen for a place has their selection for the team or role.
Similarchoice, choosing, picking, nomination
Oppositerejection
- 3A person or thing chosen from among others, such as a piece of music or a passage of writing picked to be performed or read.
The wine was an excellent selection for the dinner.
The pianist's final selection was a short piece by Chopin.
UsageFor music or writing, often plural with from: selections from the musical.
- 4Ellipsis of natural selection.
Selection has shaped the camouflage patterns of these moths.
Biologists study how selection drives gradual change within a species.
Note
Biologists drop "natural" once the topic is clear and let the bare noun carry the whole sense, usually uncountable. Darwin does this in On the Origin of Species (1859). There "the process of selection" stands beside "artificial selection", the breeder's deliberate version. So the full phrase comes back whenever the two must be told apart.
Checked 6 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, first published in 1859. darwin-online.org.uk
- Darwin uses bare selection for natural selection and places the exact phrases “the process of selection” and “artificial selection” together in the 1859 text. darwin-online.org.uk
- Artificial selection refers to selection by breeders for a desired purpose. darwin-online.org.uk
Less common meanings
- 5A set of items a user has marked so that operations can be performed on them.
Copy the current selection and paste it into the new document.
The toolbar buttons apply only to your active selection.
UsageYou make, extend or clear a selection, often called the current or active selection.
Note
The interface meaning is familiar from any editor or file browser. It covers whatever files, cells, text spans or graphical elements are currently marked as the target of the next command, such as copy, delete or format.
- 6In databases, the operation of picking out the rows or records that meet a given condition, or the set of records it returns.
- 7A stage in a genetic algorithm that chooses genomes from a population for later breeding, favoring those with greater fitness.
- 8In linguistics, the way a predicate restricts the meaning of the arguments it can take.
- 9The choosing and buying of unsurveyed crown land by settlers in certain Australian colonies, allowed under land laws introduced in the 1860s.
- 10A plot of land or farm taken up under the free-selection land laws of 1860s Australia.
Practice
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Origin
English took it as a learned borrowing of Latin sēlēctiō ('the act of choosing out, selection'). That noun was built on the verb sēligō ('choose out, select'), itself made of sē- ('apart') and legō ('gather, select'). In English terms it amounts to select + -ion.