Did the word 'evolution' exist before Charles Darwin's theory?

It is curious that, although the modern theory of evolution has its source in Charles Darwin's great book On the Origin of Species (1859), the word evolution does not appear in the ... The testacea of the ocean existed first, until some of them by gradual evolution, were improved into those inhabiting the land. read more

Charles Darwin used the word only once, in the closing paragraph of"The Origin of Species" (1859), and preferred descent with modification, in part because evolution already had been used in the 18c. homunculus theory of embryological development (first proposed under this name by Bonnet, 1762), in part because it carried a sense of"progress" not found in Darwin's idea. read more

Darwin and Wallace’s Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection On July 1, 1858, a joint paper was read to the Linnean Society. The authors were Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. read more