spawn

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The eggs of aquatic animals such as bivalve mollusks, fishes, and amphibians.
2. n. Offspring occurring in numbers; brood.
3. n. A person who is the issue of a parent or family.
4. n. The source of something; a germ or seed.
5. n. A product or an outcome.
6. n. Mycelia of mushrooms or other fungi grown in specially prepared organic matter for planting in beds.
7. v. To deposit eggs; produce spawn.
8. v. To produce offspring in large numbers.
9. v. To produce or deposit (spawn).
10. v. To produce in large numbers.
11. v. To give rise to; engender: tyranny that spawned revolt.
12. v. To cause to spawn; bring forth; produce: a family that had spawned a monster.
13. v. To plant with mycelia grown in specially prepared organic matter.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To produce or lay (eggs): said of a female fish, and by extension of other animals; hence, to generate. It is sometimes applied, in contempt, to human beings.
2. To produce or lay eggs of the kinds called spawn, as a fish, frog, mollusk, or crustacean; by extension, to produce offspring: said of other animals, and, in contempt, of human beings.
3. To issue, as the eggs or young of a fish: by extension applied to other animals, and to human beings, in contempt.
4. n. The eggs or ova of various oviparous animals, as amphibians, fishes, mollusks, crustaceans, etc., when small and numerous, or extruded in more or less coherent masses; female roe. The number of individual eggs in spawn varies much, and is sometimes prodigiously great: thus, it has been estimated that the spawn of a single codfish may contain several million eggs. In oviparous fishes the eggs are spawned directly into the water, fecundated as they flow out, or afterward, by the milt of the male, and left to hatch by themselves. Fish-spawn is also easily procured by the process of stripping the female, and artificially fecundated by the same process applied to the male, the spawn and milt being mixed together in the water of a vessel made for the purpose. In ovoviviparous fishes the spawn is impregnated in the body of the female, as is usual with the eggs of higher animals. Frogs and toads lay a quantity of spawn consisting of a jelly-like mass in which the eggs are embedded, and it is fertilized as it flows forth. Some shell-fish extrude spawn in firm gelatinous masses, as the common sea-snail, Natica heros. (See sand-saucer.) The mass of eggs (called coral or berry) that a lobster carries under her tail is the spawn or roe of that crustacean; and in various other crustaceans and some fishes the spawn is carried to hatching in special brood-pouches (see opossum-shrimp), which are sometimes in the male instead of the female, as in the sea-horse (see Hippocampidæ). Anadromous fishes are those which leave the sea and run up rivers to spawn; a few fishes are catadromous, or the converse of this. The name spawn is seldom or never given to the eggs of scaly reptiles, birds, or mammals; but the term has sometimes included milt. See spawning.
5. n. The spat of the oyster, from the time of the discharge of the egg until the shell is visible and the creature has become attached.
6. n. Offspring of fish; very small fish; fry.
7. n. Offspring in general; a swarming brood: applied, mostly in contempt, to human beings.
8. n. In botany, the mycelium of fungi; the white fibrous matter forming the matrix from which fungi are produced. Certain species of edible fungi, as Agaricus campestris, are propagated artificially by sowing the spawn in prepared beds of horse-droppings and sand.
9. Containing spawn; spawning, or about to spawn; ripe, as a fish.

Wiktionary

1. v. To produce and/or deposit (eggs) in water.
2. v. To generate, bring into being, especially non-mammalian beings in very large numbers.
3. v. To bring forth in general.
4. v. To induce (aquatic organisms) to spawn
5. v. To plant with fungal spawn
6. v. To deposit (numerous) eggs in water.
7. v. To reproduce, especially in large numbers.
8. v. (of a character or object) To appear spontaneously in a game at a certain point and time.
9. n. The numerous eggs of an aquatic organism
10. n. Mushroom mycelium prepared for (aided) propagation
11. n. Any germ or seed, even a figurative source; offspring

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To produce or deposit (eggs), as fishes or frogs do.
2. v. To bring forth; to generate; -- used in contempt.
3. v. To deposit eggs, as fish or frogs do.
4. v. To issue, as offspring; -- used contemptuously.
5. n. The ova, or eggs, of fishes, oysters, and other aquatic animals.
6. n. Any product or offspring; -- used contemptuously.
7. n. The buds or branches produced from underground stems.
8. n. The white fibrous matter forming the matrix from which fungi.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. call forth
2. n. the mass of eggs deposited by fish or amphibians or molluscs
3. v. lay spawn