evidence: Did Charles Darwin coin the phrase 'survival of the fittest'? What is the meaning of the phrase 'survival of the fittest'? And when was it first used? Justin Pollard explores the phrase and the great misconception that it was created by Charles Darwin… Although the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ came about as a direct result of the publication of Charles Darwin’s seminal On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, it was not a phrase he at first used to describe what he called ‘natural selection’.