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
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
"The peroxisome gets even larger during the seed to seedling stage, when the plant is relying on fatty acids for energy, before shrinking back down to its normal size once the plant can photosynthesize."
From Science Daily ● Apr. 25, 2026
Weyerhaeuser trained an AI model to pore over drone footage and calculate seedling survival rates, which are typically obtained by sending foresters to count twiggy young trees in rugged or sweltering terrain.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 23, 2026
With each tender seedling that unfurled its small green leaf to my eager gaze, my excitement would rise and mount; winged, wondrous.
From "Nectar in a Sieve" by Kamala Markandaya
The couple grew the seedlings from cones collected at Sequoia & Canyon National Parks and obtained phytosanitary certificates to transport them.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 30, 2026
We then unloaded four potted seedlings onto a cart and hauled them to our campsite.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 30, 2026
Hundreds of survey plots were established and thousands of seedlings were monitored.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 4, 2026
But some seedlings were kept, and so its legacy has not been forgotten.
From BBC ● Oct. 1, 2026
Baachan, cupping twenty or so seedlings in her hands, said, “Now I show you how to do. You take seedling”—she held one up—“and plant into ground like this. Put it right here at bead.”
From "A Place to Belong" by Cynthia Kadohata
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
