seedling
Americannoun
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seedlings
plural
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a plant or tree grown from a seed.
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a tree not yet 3 feet (1 meter) high.
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any young plant, especially one grown in a nursery for transplanting.
noun
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A young plant, especially one that grows from a seed rather than from a cutting.
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See Note at germination
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of seedling
Vocabulary lists containing seedling
Plants (Botany) - Introduction
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Plants (Botany) - Middle School
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Plants (Botany) - High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Art provided a release for the young Kusama, whose father, a seedling merchant, was unfaithful to her mother.
From Barron's ● Aug. 27, 2026
Eighty years of students coming through the halls of Dorsey watched the small seedling sprout into a towering, beautiful beast.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 9, 2026
This was as a result of feral goats who ate every tree seedling which then prevented the forest from regenerating.
From BBC ● May 25, 2026
"It was only then that we were able to see that PEX11 is clearly involved in controlling the growth of the peroxisome during the seed to seedling stage."
From Science Daily ● Apr. 25, 2026
For a number of years California rice growers have been treating seed with DDT as protection against tadpole shrimp and scavenger beetles which sometimes damage seedling rice.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
ArborGen, one of the world’s largest suppliers of loblolly seedlings, said sales volume in the South has dropped more than 20% over its past two fiscal years.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
The team will compare results from the dead Joshua seedlings with those that survived, as well as with samples from older Joshua trees growing nearby.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026
Depending on what they learn, the fix for future planting projects could be as simple as mixing a bit of native earth into the potting soil where the Joshua tree seedlings are grown.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026
The government has promised to compensate for the swathes of trees cut down by planting seedlings in Haryana -- a northern state next to New Delhi.
From Barron's ● May 18, 2026
And, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death.
From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
