ovary

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The usually paired female or hermaphroditic reproductive organ that produces ova and, in vertebrates, estrogen and progesterone.
2. n. Botany The ovule-bearing lower part of a pistil that ripens into a fruit.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. That part of a female animal in which ova, eggs, or germs are generated and matured; the essential female organ of reproduction, corresponding to the testes of the male; the female genital gland or germ-gland; the ovarium. In vertebrates the ovary is a glandular organ, usually paired, sometimes single, and morphologically identical with the testes, both these organs being developed from a primitively indifferent genital gland common to both sexes, the differentiation of this structure into ovary or testes being the fundamental distinction of sex upon which all other sexual differences are consequent. The ovary consists of its proper stroma or tissue peculiar to itself, in which the ova are produced, bound up in ordinary connective tissue, supplied with appropriate vessels or nerves, and fixed in the abdominal cavity by means of a mesentery. With the ovary is usually but not always associated a special structure, the oviduct, serving to convey away the eggs. The ovary is relatively largest in those animals which lay multitudinous eggs, as fishes, in which it is known as the roe. It is also large in oviparous animals which lay large meroblastic eggs with copious food yolks, as birds and most reptiles. It is very small in mammals. The ovary in woman is a flattened ovoid body about 1½ inches long, ¾ inch wide, and ⅓ inch thick, resting on the broad ligament of the uterus and closely connected both with that organ and with the Fallopian tube or oviduct. Among invertebrates in which there is distinction of sex, the name ovary is applied to any part of the body which can be recognized as having the function of ovulation. Such organs are of almost endlessly varied character in all but the one essential physiological respect. Several kinds of ovaries receive specific names; and in many cases the analogy to the part of a plant called the ovary (see def. 2) is striking. See cuts under Dibranchiata and Nematoidea.
2. n. In botany, a closed case or receptacle, the lower section of the pistil, inclosing the ovules or young seeds, and ultimately becoming the fruit. Structurally the ovary is a modified leaf which is folded involutely so as to form a cavity, and with the style and stigma it constitutes the female sexual organs (gynœcium) of flowering plants. The ovary may be simple (that is, composed of a single leaf), or compounded of two or more leaves. The modified part of the interior of the ovary which bears the ovules is called the placenta (which see). The phrases superior and inferior ovary are used to designate the position of the ovary in relation to that of the floral envelops: thus, ovary superior is that in which the other parts of the flower are inserted upon the axis below the ovary, ovary inferior is that in which the other parts of the flower are inserted above, seemingly upon the ovary. See cuts under anthophore, Araceæ, Didynamia, dimerous, and myrtle.
3. Of or pertaining to an ovation.

Wiktionary

1. n. anatomy A female reproductive organ, often paired, that produces ova and in mammals secretes the hormones estrogen and progesterone.
2. n. botany The lower part of a pistil or carpel that bears ovules and ripens into fruit.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Bot.) That part of the pistil which contains the seed, and in most flowering plants develops into the fruit. See Illust. of flower.
2. n. (Zoöl. & Anat.) The essential female reproductive organ in which the ova are produced. See Illust. of Discophora.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the organ that bears the ovules of a flower
2. n. (vertebrates) one of usually two organs that produce ova and secrete estrogen and progesterone