SEMINAL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Seminal

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/sˈɛmənəl/ Listen

adjective

Seminal adj.

Pertaining to, containing, or consisting of, seed or semen; as, the seminal fluid.

Contained in seed.

Hence: Holding the first place in a series of developed results or consequents; serving as a source, or first principle; giving rise to related ideas or results; germinal; radical; primary; original; as, seminal principles of generation; seminal virtue; a seminal discovery. "The idea of God is, beyond all question or comparison, the one great seminal principle."

Seminal leaf (Bot.), a seed leaf, or cotyleden.

Seminal receptacle. (Zool.) Same as Spermatheca.

noun

Seminal n. A seed. (Obs.)

See images of 'Seminal'

Etymology of 'Seminal'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Seminal" Quotes from Famous Books

... in travail with a new and higher order, the conception can be traced to the seminal words of the Bible. The institutions and manners of progressive civilization are what they are because in the heart of that ...

— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... thither; arid gravely asserts that he has often experienced, that if diamonds be wetted with May-dew, they will grow to a great size in a course of years. This probably is an improvement upon the Arabian philosophy or the production of pearls by the oysters catching that superlative seminal influence. The following singular article of intelligence respecting India, may be copied as a specimen of the work: "In that countree growen many strong vynes: and the women drynken wyn, and men not: and the women shaven hire berdes, and the men not." From India he proceeds ...

— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... centrifugal and reviling the centripetal force. One party would be condemning the malignity of the force which was dragging us all into the sun, and the other the malignity of the force which was driving us madly into space. The seminal error of modern speculation is shown in this tendency to speak as advocates of one of different forces, all of which are necessary to the harmonious ...

— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... ago, certain new sidereal conceptions arose in the minds of half a dozen philosophers, (isolated and utterly destitute of political or social influence, powerful only in the possession of a sublime and seminal thought,)—conceptions which, during these two centuries, have succeeded in overthrowing a doctrine as old as the human mind, closely interknit with the entire texture of opinions, authority, politics, ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... Behold here the seminal principle, which contains within it, as in an embryo state, the rudiments of all true virtue; which, striking deep its roots, though feeble perhaps and lowly in its beginnings, silently progressive; ...

— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

More quotes...