Germinate

Quick meaning: Germinate is a verb meaning (intransitive, botany, horticulture) Of a seed, to begin to grow, to sprout roots and leaves.

Meaning

(intransitive, botany, horticulture) Of a seed, to begin to grow, to sprout roots and leaves.

More Meanings

1. (transitive) To cause to grow; to produce.

Example Sentences

the Chalcites, which hath a Spirit that will put forth and germinate

These were business hours, and a feeling of loneliness crept over him, perhaps germinated by his sight of the illustrated papers, and accentuated by an attempted perusal of them.

Orchids rely on fungi to reproduce. Their tiny seeds don't have any on-board nutrients (like beans and apples) and will not germinate until they are infected by a symbiotic fungus which supplies them with food. Known as a protocorm, this tiny orchid-fungus ball grows, turns green and eventually starts to photosynthesise.

It would suffice to keep up the full number of a tree, which lived on an average for a thousand years, if a single seed were produced once in a thousand years, supposing that this seed were never destroyed, and could be ensured to germinate in a fitting place. So that in all cases, the average number of any animal or plant depends only indirectly on the number of its eggs or seeds.

Word Forms

• germinates
• germinating
• germinated

Synonyms for germinate

Depending on context, synonyms include ackerspyre, shoot, pullulate, bourgeon, sprout, spud.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include sprout, spud, bourgeon, shoot, pullulate, vegetate.

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