subdiscipline

noun

sub·​dis·​ci·​pline ˌsəb-ˈdi-sə-plən 

variants or less commonly sub-discipline

plural subdisciplines also sub-disciplines

: a discipline (such as an academic discipline) that is part of a broader discipline

Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline of chemistry.

The management of programmers is a discipline unto itself. There are subdisciplines that deal with how coders communicate.

—Paul Ford

Examples of subdiscipline in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The problem is that not all universities ask external reviewers, who are chosen because of their expertise in the scholar’s subdiscipline, to focus on their research. —Bykatie Langin, science.org, 4 Oct. 2024

Lynch’s protocol for the subdiscipline involves identifying and digging up samples and then creating metrics by which multiple plants’ root systems can be judged. —Maddie Bender, Smithsonian Magazine, 19 Mar. 2024

The subdiscipline basically denotes the study of everything that can be uprooted with a shovel. —Maddie Bender, Smithsonian Magazine, 19 Mar. 2024

Trinh and his colleagues have emphasized that their approach could also be applied to other mathematical subdisciplines such as combinatorics, however. —Manon Bischoff, Scientific American, 17 Jan. 2024

Spheres are especially important in a subdiscipline of geometry known as contact geometry. —Leila Sloman, Quanta Magazine, 7 Nov. 2023

Sometime in the 1970s archeologists broadened their focus, giving rise to a subdiscipline called household archeology. —Mary Roach, Discover Magazine, 11 Nov. 2019

Since then a subdiscipline of neuroscience has emerged—one dedicated to plotting out the brains of increasingly complex organisms. —Lauren Leffer, Scientific American, 21 Aug. 2023

Researchers in this subdiscipline try to understand how aging will affect social relationships and roles. —Virginia Hammerle, Dallas News, 18 June 2023

Word History

First Known Use

1912, in the meaning defined above