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''spore'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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Primary

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''spore'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260320113731-00-⌔

spore - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

🖼️ ➺

Noun

spore (plural spores)

  • A reproductive particle, usually a single cell, released by a fungus, alga, or plant that may germinate into another.
    • ✤ Thresher maws are subterranean carnivores that spend their entire lives eating or searching for something to eat. Threshers reproduce via spores that lie dormant for millennia, yet are robust enough to survive prolonged periods in deep space and atmospheric re-entry. As a result, thresher spores appear on many worlds, spread by previous generations of space travelers.1
    • ✤ After anthrax spores were found in letters sent to Sens. Patrick Leahy and Thomas Daschle in 2001, Congress began screening all the mail that came into the building.2
  • A thick resistant particle produced by a bacterium or protist to survive in harsh or unfavorable conditions.

Verb

spore (third-person singular simple present spores, present participle sporing, simple past and past participle spored)

  • To produce spores.

Etymology

From New Latin spora, from Ancient Greek σπορά (sporá, “seed”), related to σπόρος (spóros, “sowing”) and σπείρω (speírō, “to sow”). Related to English spread).

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) enPR: spô, IPA: /spɔː(ɹ)/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • (General American, Canada) enPR: spôr, IPA: /spoɹ/
  • (Australian, New Zealand) IPA: /spoː(ɹ)/
  • (rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) enPR: spōr, IPA: /spo(ː)ɹ/
  • (non-rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) IPA: /spoə/
  • Homophone: spoor (accents with the pour–poor merger)
  • Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Thresher Maws Codex entry: ↩

  2. 2017 June 14, Julian Zelizer, “The challenge of protecting members of Congress”, in CNN ‎, archived from the original on 14 June 2017: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

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