Definition of "seed" in English

noun

1. (countable, agriculture) Any propagative portion of a plant which may be sown, such as true seeds, seed-like fruits, tubers, or bulbs.

2. (uncountable, collective) An amount of seeds that cannot be readily counted.

   • The entire field was covered with geese eating the freshly sown seed.

3. (countable) A fragment of coral.

4. (uncountable) Semen.

   • A man must use his seed to start and raise a family.

5. (countable, figurative) A precursor.

   • the seed of an idea
   • Which idea was the seed (idea)?

6. (countable) The initial state, condition or position of a changing, growing or developing process; the ultimate precursor in a defined chain of precursors.

7. (now rare) Offspring, descendants, progeny.

   • the seed of Abraham

8. Race; generation; birth.

9. (physics) A small particle, bubble, or imperfection that serves as a nucleation point for some process.

10. A small bubble formed in imperfectly fused glass.

11. (US slang) A child.

verb

1. (transitive) To plant or sow an area with seeds.

   • I seeded my lawn with bluegrass.

2. (reflexive) To shed seeds (refers to plants)

   • These poppies have not seeded themselves yet.

3. (transitive) To cover thinly with something scattered; to ornament with seedlike decorations.

4. (transitive) To start; to provide, assign or determine the initial resources for, position of, state of.

   • A venture capitalist seeds young companies.
   • The tournament coordinator will seed the starting lineup with the best competitors from the qualifying round.
   • The programmer seeded fresh, uncorrupted data into the database before running unit tests.

5. (sports, gaming) To allocate a seeding to a competitor.

6. (Internet, transitive) To leave (files) available for others to download through peer-to-peer file sharing protocols (e.g. BitTorrent).

7. (intransitive) To be qualified to compete, especially in a quarter-final, semi-final, or final.

   • The tennis player seeded into the quarters.

8. (meteorology) To scatter small particles within (a cloud or airmass) in order to trigger the formation of rain.

   • A number of clouds were seeded to help provide rain to a drought-stricken area.