Embryo definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

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Definitions (18)

American Heritage Dictionary (6)

noun An organism in its early stages of development, especially before it has reached a distinctively recognizable form.
noun An organism at any time before full development, birth, or hatching.
noun The fertilized egg of a vertebrate animal following cleavage.

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Century Dictionary (8)

The fecundated germ of an animal in its earlier stages of development, and before it has assumed the distinctive form and structure of the parent; a germ; a rudiment; in a more extended sense, a rudimentary animal during its whole antenatal existance. In the later stages of development, especially in man and the mammals generally, the name fetus commonly takes the place of embryology In the cases of oviparous animals, the term embryo properly covers the whole course of development of the fecundated germ in the egg (which see, and see cut under dorsal): as, the hen's egg contained an embryo ready to hatch. By a late and loose, though now common, extension of the term, it is applied to various larval stages of some in vertebrates, which in the course of their transformation are frequently so different from the parent as to be described as distinct species or genera: as, the embryo (first larval stage) of a cestoid worm. The embryos of a man, dog, seal, bat, reptile, etc., can at first hardly be distinguished from each other. Darwin, Descent of Man, I. 31.
In botany, the rudimentary plant contained in the seed, the result of the action of pollen upon the ovule. It may be so rudimentary as to have apparently no distinction of parts; but even in its simplest form it consists virtually of a single internode of an axis, which upon germination develops at one extremity a leaf or leaves with a terminal bud, and a root at the other. In more developed embryos this initial internode or caulicle (often incorrectly called radicle) bears at one end one, two, or more rudimentary leaves called cotyledons, and often an initial bud or plumnle. Also called germ. By recent authors the term is also applied to the developed oöspore in vascular cryptogams. See cuts under albumen and cotyledon.
The beginning or first state of anything, while yet in a rude and undeveloped condition; the condition of anything which has been conceived but is not yet developed or executed; rudimentary state: chiefly in the phrase in embryo. There were Items of such a Treaty being in Embrio. Congreve, Way of the World, i. 9. The company little suspected what a noble work I had then in embryo. Swift. A little bench of heedless bishops here, And there a chancellor in embryo. Shenstone, Schoolmistress.

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Before 14 days all the cells in the embryo are all the same. — Popular Science
Evidently, many people do not believe that the embryo is a human being.
Of course (absent an artificial womb) the developing human is dependent upon his or her mother for nourishment and an environment hospitable for survival; but this does not mean that the embryo is at any stage anything other than a distinct and complete human organism-a living member of the species Homo sapiens in the earliest stages of his or her natural development. — U.S. News
Today it is possible to transform adult cells into an embryonic state, thus bypassing most religious questions of whether the embryo is a pre-born person. — The Nation: Top Stories
The DNA was placed in an egg taken from the surrogate mother to create a reconstructed embryo, and the embryo was then implanted in the surrogate mother's uterus.

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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

American Heritage Dictionary (1)

Medieval Latin embryō, from Greek embruon : en-, in; see en-² + bruein, to be full to bursting.

Century Dictionary (1)

Formerly also embrio (also embryon, fromerly also embrion); from French embryon = Spanish embrion = Portuguese embryão = Italian embrione, from New Latin embryon, erroneously taken, apparently at first by French writers, as embryo(n-), as if from a Greek *ἐμβρυών, but properly embryon (reg. L. *embryum), from Greek ἔμβρυον, (stem ἐμβρυ-), the embryo, fetus, also applied to a newly born animal, neuter of ἔμβρυος, growing in, from ἐν, in, + βρύειν, swell, be full.

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