Word.ws English Dictionary

seed

UK/siːd/

seed noun: any propagative portion of a plant which may be sown, such as true seeds, seed-like fruits, tubers, or bulbs. Also the simple past and past participle of see.

seed: any propagative portion of a plant which may be sown, such as true seeds, seed-like fruits, tubers,...
Image: Alexander Klepnev, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

seed (countable and uncountable, plural seeds)

  1. (countable) Any propagative portion of a plant which may be sown, such as true seeds, seed-like fruits, tubers, or bulbs.
    • […] for hungry birds have devoured ſeeds, and having moiſtened and warmed them in their bellies, a little after have dunged in the forky twiſtes of Trees, and together with their dung excluded the ſeed whole which erſt they had ſwallowed: and ſometimes it brings forth there where they dung it, […]1669, John Baptiſta Porta, chapter V, in Natural Magick, The Third Book Of Natural Magick: […] , page 68
    Synonyms:
    spawn
    1. (countable) A fertilized and ripened ovule, containing an embryonic plant.
    2. (countable) Any small seed-like fruit.
      • If you plant a seed in the spring, you may have a pleasant surprise in the autumn.
      • The exiguity and ſmallneſſe of ſome ſeeds extending to large productions is one of the magnalities of nature, ſomewhat illuſtrating the work of the Creation, and vaſt production from nothing.1658, Thomas Browne, “The Garden of Cyrus. […]. Chapter III.”, in Hydriotaphia, Urne-buriall, […] Together with The Garden of Cyrus, […], London: […] Hen[ry] Brome […], →OCLC, page 136
  2. (collective, uncountable) 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.
    • And if any mans seede of copulation goe out from him, then hee shall wash all his flesh in water, and bee vncleane vntill the Euen.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Leviticus 15:16
  5. (countable, figuratively) A precursor.
    • the seed of an idea
    • Which idea was the seed (idea)?
    Synonyms:
    germ
  6. The initial position of a competitor or team in a tournament. (seed position)
    • The team with the best regular season record receives the top seed in the conference tournament.
  7. The competitor or team occupying a given seed (position).
    • The rookie was a surprising top seed.
    • Serving at deuce and trailing to Germany’s Tamara Korpatsch 5-2 in the first set of their second-round match at the French Open, the Chinese No. 32 seed saw a forehand called out by a line judge.2026 May 28, Charlotte Harpur, “Tamara Korpatsch, Wang Xinyu and the story of the strangest French Open match so far”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
  8. The initialization state of a pseudorandom number generator or similar system.
    • If you use the same seed you will get exactly the same pattern of numbers.
    • As suggested in [3], space can be saved by using a deterministic pseudo random number generator (PRNG) and storing only the seed of that PRNG.2009, Daniel J. Bernstein, Johannes Buchmann, Erik Dahmen, editors, Post-Quantum Cryptography, Springer, →ISBN, page 44
    Synonyms:
    seed number
  9. (by extension) A unique code that acts as a blueprint for generating a specific game world, determining terrain, structures, and resource placement.
    • Seeds are Minecraft's way of generating terrain. Each biome you spawn in is determined by the seed. With a custom seed, you can have a desert biome right next to a mesa biome.2015, Jesse Stay, Thomas Stay, Jacob Cordeiro, Minecraft For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 242
    Synonyms:
    seed number
  10. (Internet) A commercial message in a creative format placed on relevant sites on the Internet. (seed idea or seed message)
    • The latest seed has attracted a lot of users in our online community.
  11. (archaic) Offspring, descendants, progeny.
    • the seed of Abraham
    • Next him king Leyr in happie peace long raind, / But had no issue male him to succeed, / But three faire daughters, which were well vptraind, / In all that seemed fit for kingly seed […]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
  12. Race; generation; birth.
    • Of mortal seed they were not held.a. 1687, Edmund Waller, To Zelinda
Show 3 more meaningsShow fewer meanings
  1. A small particle, bubble, or imperfection that serves as a nucleation point for some process.
  2. A small bubble formed in imperfectly fused glass.
  3. (US, slang) A child.
    • Seeds know what time it is, like it's time for Teletubbies2004, MF DOOM, “One Beer”, in MM..FOOD

Verb

seed (third-person singular simple present seeds, present participle seeding, simple past and past participle seeded)

  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.
    • […] AGRYPNIA, or Vigilance, in yellovv, a ſable mantle, ſeeded vvith vvaking eies, and ſiluer fringe: […]1604 March 25 (first performance; Gregorian calendar), B[en] Jon[son], “The Pegme at Fen-church”, in B. Jon: His Part of King James His Royall and Magnificent Entertainement through His Honorable...
  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.
  5. To allocate a seeding to a competitor.
    • Everybody likes to second‐guess computers, including who seed the pros. Nothing could have better exposed the vulnerability of the computer seeding than the spectacle of clay‐court experts looking like weekend hackers on grass.1979 July 2, “Reflection on the Seedings Fills Pause at Wimbledon”, in The New York Times
  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. 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.
  9. (intransitive) To produce seed.
  10. (intransitive) To grow to maturity.
  11. (slang, vulgar) To ejaculate inside the penetratee during intercourse, especially in the rectum.

Proper noun capitalized: Seed

Seed (plural Seeds)

  1. A surname.

Also used as

seed is also the simple past and past participle of see.

seed meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

seed in Hindi

any small seed-like fruit
बीज bīj, दाना dānā

seed in Tamil

any small seed-like fruit
விதை vitai, வித்து vittu

seed in Urdu

any small seed-like fruit
بیج bīj

seed in Bengali

any small seed-like fruit
বীজ bij
More languagesFewer languages
seed in Telugu
విత్తనం vittanaṁ, విత్తు vittu, బీజం bījaṁ
seed in Malayalam
വിത്ത് vittŭ
seed in Kannada
ಬೀಜ bīja
seed in Gujarati
બિયું biyũ, બી bī, બીજ bīj
seed in Sanskrit
बीज bīja
seed in Assamese
বীজ biz, গুটি guti
seed in Nepali
दाना dānā
seed in Tagalog
buto, binhi, binhî
seed in Arabic
بِذْرَة biḏra, زَرِّيعَة zarrīʕa, بِزْر bizr, بِزِر bizir
seed in Malay
benih, biji benih
seed in Indonesian
biji
seed in Persian
تُخم toxm, بزر bazr, بذر bazr, دانه dâne
seed in Thai
เมล็ดพันธุ์ má-lét-pan, พันธุ์พืช pan-pʉ̂ʉt, เม็ด mét, เมล็ด má-lét
seed in Vietnamese
hột, hạt, hạt giống
seed in Myanmar
အစေ့ a.ce., အဆန် a.hcan
Sindhi
ٻج ḇj

Examples of seed in a sentence

  • The programmer seeded fresh, uncorrupted data into the database before running unit tests.
  • A good example is mutations that disrupt seed dispersal, leaving the seeds on the heads long after they are ripe.2013 May-June, David Van Tassel, Lee DeHaan, “Wild Plants to the Rescue”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3:
  • Sometimes it takes more than you have / To benefit from what you know / Sometimes you keep pouring water / But the seeds don't grow, woah1977, Ashford & Simpson, “Too Bad”, in Send It:

All 40 example sentences with seed

Synonyms of seed

Forms of seed

Noun
pluralseeds
alternative form (obsolete)sede
Verb
third-person singular presentseeds
present participleseeding
past participleseeded
pastseeded
Proper noun
pluralSeeds

Past tense of seed: seeded

Plural of seed: seeds

Origin of seed

] From Middle English seed, sede, side, from Old English sēd, sǣd (“seed, that which is sown”), from Proto-West Germanic *sād, from Proto-Germanic *sēdą, from Proto-Indo-European *seh₁- (“to sow, throw”). Cognates Cognate with Yola zeade (“seed”), North Frisian sead, seed, siad, Siid, sädj, säid (“seed”), Saterland Frisian Säid (“seed”), West Frisian sied (“seed”), Dutch zaad (“seed”), German Saat (“seed; sowing”), Limburgish zaod (“seed”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk sæd (“seed”), Faroese and Icelandic sáð (“seed”), Swedish säd (“seed”), Gothic *𐍃𐌴𐌸𐍃 (*sēþs, “seed”); also Latin serō (“to sow, plant”), Latvian sēt (“to sow”), Lithuanian sėti (“to sow”), Bulgarian се́я (séja, “to sow, plant”), Czech sít (“to sow”), Macedonian сее (see, “to sow”), Polish siać (“to sow”), Russian се́ять (séjatʹ, “to sow”), Serbo-Croatian се̏јати, sȅjati, си̏јати, sȉjati (“to sow”), Slovak siať (“to sow”), Slovene sejáti (“to sow”), Ukrainian сі́яти (síjaty, “to sow”). More at sow.

From see + -d (“past tense suffix; variant of -ed”).

Words formed from seed

Phrases with seed

114 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with seed

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about seed

What does seed mean?
Seed means any propagative portion of a plant which may be sown, such as true seeds, seed-like fruits, tubers, or bulbs.
What is seed in Hindi?
Seed in Hindi is बीज (bīj), दाना (dānā). See Seed meaning in Hindi.
How do you use seed in a sentence?
The programmer seeded fresh, uncorrupted data into the database before running unit tests.
What part of speech is seed?
Seed can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce seed?
Seed is pronounced /siːd/ (UK).
What is the plural of seed?
The plural of seed is seeds.

Words near seed in the dictionary

  1. seech
  2. seeched
  3. seeches
  4. seechin'
  5. seeching
  6. seed
  7. seed bank
  8. seed banking
  9. seed banks
  10. seed bead
  11. seed beads

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: seed (page history and authors); Seed (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-seed.wav.

Cite this entry: “seed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/seed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.