"Allen's rule" meaning in English

See Allen's rule in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Proper name

Etymology: Formulated by Joel Asaph Allen in 1877. Head templates: {{en-proper noun}} Allen's rule
  1. An ecogeographic principle broadly stating that animals adapted to cold climates have relatively short limbs. Specifically, homeothermic animals in hot climates have low volume-to-surface ratios, and homeothermic animals in cold climates have high volume-to-surface ratios, due to thermal adaptation.
    Sense id: en-Allen's_rule-en-name-7XCz2vUW Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries
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        "An ecogeographic principle broadly stating that animals adapted to cold climates have relatively short limbs. Specifically, homeothermic animals in hot climates have low volume-to-surface ratios, and homeothermic animals in cold climates have high volume-to-surface ratios, due to thermal adaptation."
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        [
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        ]
      ]
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  "word": "Allen's rule"
}
{
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        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English proper nouns",
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      "glosses": [
        "An ecogeographic principle broadly stating that animals adapted to cold climates have relatively short limbs. Specifically, homeothermic animals in hot climates have low volume-to-surface ratios, and homeothermic animals in cold climates have high volume-to-surface ratios, due to thermal adaptation."
      ],
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Download raw JSONL data for Allen's rule meaning in English (0.9kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-03-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-03-03 using wiktextract (05c257f and 9d9a410). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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