SPORE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Spore

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noun

Spore n.

(Bot.)

(a)

One of the minute grains in flowerless plants, which are analogous to seeds, as serving to reproduce the species. Note: Spores are produced differently in the different classes of cryptogamous plants, and as regards their nature are often so unlike that they have only their minuteness in common. The peculiar spores of diatoms (called auxospores) increase in size, and at length acquire a siliceous coating, thus becoming new diatoms of full size. Compare Macrospore, Microspore, Oospore, Resting spore, Sphaerospore, Swarmspore, Tetraspore, Zoospore, and Zygospore.

(b)

An embryo sac or embryonal vesicle in the ovules of flowering plants.

(Biol.)

(a)

A minute grain or germ; a small, round or ovoid body, formed in certain organisms, and by germination giving rise to a new organism; as, the reproductive spores of bacteria, etc.

(b)

One of the parts formed by fission in certain Protozoa. See Spore formation, belw.

Spore formation.

(a)

(Biol) A mode of reproduction resembling multiple fission, common among Protozoa, in which the organism breaks up into a number of pieces, or spores, each of which eventually develops into an organism like the parent form.

(b)

The formation of reproductive cells or spores, as in the growth of bacilli.

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Etymology of 'Spore'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Spore" Quotes from Famous Books

... "There would be not a blade of grass, not a living spore, not a hidden egg! Think of it, Oakham! No more would the clean air and the sweet earth reek with life, and at last the ultimate mind-electron would be ...

— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... the animal world is primarily divided into Invertebrates and Vertebrates, the plant world is primarily divided into a lower kingdom of spore-bearing plants (the Cryptogams) and an upper kingdom of seed-bearing plants (the Phanerogams). Again, just as the first half of the earth's story is the age of Invertebrate animals, so it is the age of Cryptogamous plants. So far evolution was always ...

— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... the microscope, the germ of, say, tetanus is a minute bar with spore at the end like the head of a tadpole. Of what is this ...

— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... plants, it may divide into a great number of small spores. In these processes it often happens that the whole body of the mother, the entire cell, may resolve itself into two or more children; at times, however, a small portion of the mother cell remains unused. This remnant, in the spore-forming unicellular plants represented by the cell wall, is then ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... of Osaka in Japan, attributed the disease to a microscopic spore found largely developed in rice, and which he had also detected in the earth of ...

— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair

Words linked to "Spore" : agamete, conidiospore, spore case, spore-bearing, conidium, oospore, chlamydospore, spore mother cell, resting spore, tetraspore, zygospore, megaspore, zoospore, carpospore, spore sac, fern seed