seed

Etymology 1

From Middle English seed, sede, side, from Old English sēd, sǣd (“seed, that which is sown”), from Proto-West Germanic *sād, from Proto-Germanic *sēdą, from Proto-Indo-European *seh₁- (“to sow, throw”). Cognate with West Frisian sied (“seed”), Dutch zaad (“seed”), Low German Saad (“seed”), German Saat (“sowing; seed”), Icelandic sæði (“seed”), Danish sæd (“seed”), Swedish säd (“seed”), Latin satiō (“seeding, time of sowing, season”). More at sow.

noun

1. (countable, botany) A fertilized and ripened ovule, containing an embryonic plant.
2. (countable) Any small seed-like fruit.
   Plant breeding is always a numbers game.[…]The wild species we use are rich in genetic variation, […]. In addition, we are looking for rare alleles, so the more plants we try, the better. These rarities may be new mutations, or they can be existing ones that are neutral—or are even selected against—in a wild population. A good example is mutations that disrupt seed dispersal, leaving the seeds on the heads long after they are ripe. 2013 May-June, David Van Tassel, Lee DeHaan, “Wild Plants to the Rescue”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3
   If you plant a seed in the spring, you may have a pleasant surprise in the autumn.
3. (countable, agriculture) Any propagative portion of a plant which may be sown, such as true seeds, seed-like fruits, tubers, or bulbs.
4. (uncountable, collective) An amount of seeds that cannot be readily counted.
   The entire field was covered with geese eating the freshly sown seed.
5. (countable) A fragment of coral.
6. (uncountable) Semen.
   A man must use his seed to start and raise a family.
7. (countable, figurative) A precursor.
   the seed of an idea
   Which idea was the seed (idea)?
8. (countable) The initial state, condition or position of a changing, growing or developing process; the ultimate precursor in a defined chain of precursors.
   1. (sports) The initial position of a competitor or team in a tournament. (seed position)
      The team with the best regular season record receives the top seed in the conference tournament.
   2. The competitor or team occupying a given seed. (seed position)
      The rookie was a surprising top seed.
   3. (cryptography) The initialization state of a pseudorandom number generator or similar system. (seed number)
      If you use the same seed you will get exactly the same pattern of numbers.
      As suggested in [3], space can be saved by using a deterministic pseudo random number generator (PRNG) and storing only the seed of that PRNG. 2009, Daniel J. Bernstein, Johannes Buchmann, Erik Dahmen, editors, Post-Quantum Cryptography, Springer, page 44
      Seeds are Minecraft's way of generating terrain. Each biome you spawn in is determined by the seed. With a custom seed, you can have a desert biome right next to a mesa biome. 2015, Jesse Stay, Thomas Stay, Jacob Cordeiro, Minecraft For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, page 242
   4. (Internet marketing) A commercial message in a creative format placed on relevant sites on the Internet. (seed idea or seed message)
      The latest seed has attracted a lot of users in our online community.
9. (now rare) Offspring, descendants, progeny.
   the seed of Abraham
10. Race; generation; birth.
    Of mortal seed they were not held. a. 1687, Edmund Waller, To Zelinda
11. (physics) A small particle, bubble, or imperfection that serves as a nucleation point for some process.
12. A small bubble formed in imperfectly fused glass.

verb

1. (transitive) To plant or sow an area with seeds.
   I seeded my lawn with bluegrass.
2. (transitive) To cover thinly with something scattered; to ornament with seedlike decorations.
3. (transitive) To start; to provide, assign or determine the initial resources for, position of, state of.
   A venture capitalist seeds young companies.
   The tournament coordinator will seed the starting lineup with the best competitors from the qualifying round.
   The programmer seeded fresh, uncorrupted data into the database before running unit tests.
4. (sports, gaming) To allocate a seeding to a competitor.
5. (Internet, transitive) To leave (files) available for others to download through peer-to-peer file sharing protocols (e.g. BitTorrent).
6. (intransitive) To be qualified to compete, especially in a quarter-final, semi-final, or final.
   The tennis player seeded into the quarters.
7. (meteorology) To scatter small particles within (a cloud or airmass) in order to trigger the formation of rain.
   A number of clouds were seeded to help provide rain to a drought-stricken area.
8. (intransitive) To produce seed.
9. (intransitive) To grow to maturity.
10. (slang, vulgar) To ejaculate inside the penetratee during intercourse, especially in the rectum.

Etymology 2

see + -d (“past tense suffix; variant of -ed”).

verb

1. (dialectal) simple past and past participle of see