Contents

English

Wikipedia has an article on: Spawn

Etymology

Recorded since 1413; from Middle English spawne, spawnen, from Anglo-Norman espaundre, from Old French espandre, from Latin expandere (“‘stretch out", "spread out’”).

Pronunciation

Verb

Infinitive to spawn

Third person singular spawns

Simple past spawned

Past participle spawned

Present participle spawning

to spawn (third-person singular simple present spawns, present participle spawning, simple past and past participle spawned)

  1. (transitive) To produce and/or deposit (eggs) in water.
  2. (transitive) To generate, bring into being, especially non-mammalian beings in very large numbers.
  3. (transitive) To bring forth in general.
  4. (transitive) To induce (aquatic organisms) to spawn
  5. (transitive) To plant with fungal spawn
  6. (intransitive) To deposit (numerous) eggs in water.
  7. (intransitive) To reproduce, especially in large numbers.

Derived terms

Noun

Singular spawn

Plural spawn

spawn (plural spawn)

  1. The numerous eggs of an aquatic organism
  2. Mushroom mycelium prepared for (aided) propagation
  3. (by extension) Any germ or seed, even a figurative source; offspring

Derived terms

Anagrams

 

The above information uses material from Wiktionary and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Some facts may not have been fully verified for accuracy. [Disclaimers]
This page was last archived by our server on Sun Mar 7 22:55:44 2010. [ refresh local cache ]
Displaying this page or its contents does not use any Wikimedia Foundation's resources.
The owners of this site proudly support the Wikimedia Foundation.