reproduction

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act of reproducing or the condition or process of being reproduced.
2. n. Something reproduced, especially in the faithfulness of its resemblance to the form and elements of the original: a fine reproduction of a painting by Matisse.
3. n. Biology The sexual or asexual process by which organisms generate new individuals of the same kind; procreation.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act or process of reproducing, presenting, or yielding again; repetition.
2. n. The act or process of restoring parts of an organism that have been destroyed or removed.
3. n. Specifically The process whereby new individuals are generated and the perpetuation of the species is insured; the process whereby new organisms are produced from those already existing: as, the reproduction of plants or animals. The reproduction of plants is effected either vegetatively or by means of spores or of seeds. Vegetative reproduction consists in the individualizing of some part of the parent organism. In low unicellular plants this is simply a process of flssion, one cell dividing into two or more, much as in the formation of tissue, save that the new cells become independent. In higher plants this method obtains by the shooting and rooting of some fraction of the organism, as a branch, a joint of a rootstock, in Begonia even a part of a leaf; or through specially modified shoots or buds, as the gemmæ of some algæ, mosses, etc., the bulblets of some mosses, ferns, the tiger-lily, etc., the corms, bulbs, and tubers of numerous annual plants. The cells engaged in this mode of reproduction are simply those of the ordinary tissues. Very many, but not all, plants propagate in this manner; but all are capable of reproduction in other methods Included under the term spore-reproduction, which is reproduction most properly so called This is accomplished througn special reproductive cells, each of which is capable of developing into an individual plant. These are produced either independently, or through the conjunction of two separate cells by which their protoplasm coalesces. These may also in a less perfect sense be called reproductive cells. Reproduction through the union of two cells is sexual; through an independent cell, asexual. Sexual reproduction proceeds either by conjugation (that is, the union of two cells apparently just alike, which may be either common vegetative cells or specialized in form) or by fertilization, in which a smaller but more active sperm-cell or male cell impregnates a larger, less active germ-cell or female cell. In cryptogamous plants both methods are common, and the reproductive cells are termed spores, or when of the two sexes gametes, the male being distinguished as antherozoids, the female as oöspheres. In flowering plants spore-reproduction is always sexual, fertilization becoming pollination, the embryo-sac in the ovule affording the female cell and the pollen-grain the male cell. But the union of these cells produces, instead of a detachable spore, an embryo or plantlet, which, often accompanied by a store of nutriment, is inclosed within an integument, the whole forming a seed. The production of seeds instead of spores is the most fundamental distinction of phanerogams. Spore-reproduction is consummated by the germination of the Spore or seed, which often takes place after a considerable interval.
4. n. That which is produced or revived; that which is presented anew; a repetition; hence, also, a copy.
5. n. In psychology, the act of repeating in conseiousness a group of sensations which has already been presented in perception.
6. n. In forestry: The process by which a forest is renewed, whether natural or artificial.
7. n. Seedlings or saplings from sprouts or from self-sown seed.

Wiktionary

1. n. The act of reproducing new individuals biologically
2. n. The act of making copies
3. n. A copy of something, as in a piece of art; a duplicate.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Biol.) The act or process of reproducing; the state of being reproduced. the process by which plants and animals give rise to offspring.
2. n. That which is reproduced.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the process of generating offspring
2. n. the sexual activity of conceiving and bearing offspring
3. n. copy that is not the original; something that has been copied
4. n. the act of making copies
5. n. recall that is hypothesized to work by storing the original stimulus input and reproducing it during recall