Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of, relating to, containing, or conveying semen or seed.
  • adjective Of, relating to, or having the power to originate; creative.
  • adjective Highly influential in an original way; constituting or providing a basis for further development.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of or pertaining to seed or semen or the elements of reproduction.
  • 2. Containing the seed or elements of reproduction; germinal: as, seminal principles.
  • Rudimentary; original; primary.
  • noun A seed; a seminal or rudimentary element.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Pertaining to, containing, or consisting of, seed or semen.
  • adjective Contained in seed.
  • adjective Holding the first place in a series of developed results or consequents; serving as a source, or first principle; giving rise to related ideas or results; germinal; radical; primary; original
  • adjective (Bot.) a seed leaf, or cotyleden.
  • adjective (Zoöl.) Same as Spermatheca.
  • noun obsolete A seed.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of or relating to seed or semen.
  • adjective Creative or having the power to originate.
  • adjective Highly influential, especially in some original way, and providing a basis for future development or research.
  • noun obsolete A seed.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective containing seeds of later development
  • adjective pertaining to or containing or consisting of semen

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin sēminālis, from sēmen, sēmin-, seed; see semen.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin sēminālis.

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Examples

  • The duct of the seminal vesicle joins the _vas deferens_ of the same side (both functionally and embryologically the seminal vesicle is no more than a diverticulum of the vas deferens); passing on under the name of the _common seminal_ or _ejaculatory duct_, the canal opens into the prostatic portion of the urethra (the orifices of the two common seminal ducts are in the folds of mucous membrane forming the right and left lateral margins of the _prostatic utricle_ or _uterus masculinus_).

    The Sexual Life of the Child Albert Moll 1900

  • This two-disc compilation is also the first to cover both the Warner Brothers years and R.E.M.'s start on I.R.S. records, which produced the "Chronic Town" EP and "Murmur," works for which the word "seminal" should have been invented.

    BusinessWeek.com -- Top News 2011

  • Studios, and a move to Los Angeles in 1987 that landed him at Samuel Goldwyn, which he calls the seminal job of his career because it taught him about film distribution, marketing, and publicity.

    Boston.com Top Stories 2011

  • This two-disc compilation is also the first to cover both the Warner Brothers years and R.E.M.'s start on I.R.S. records, which produced the "Chronic Town" EP and "Murmur," works for which the word "seminal" should have been invented.

    BusinessWeek.com -- Top News 2011

  • She also referenced what she called a seminal study done at Sears a few years ago that found that engaged customer-service employees drive increased profits.

    CFO.com: Today in Finance 2009

  • She also referenced what she called a seminal study done at Sears a few years ago that found that engaged customer-service employees drive increased profits.

    CFO.com: Today in Finance 2009

  • Here 'spunky' is slang for 'covered in seminal fluid'.

    Princess Mahalanobis: Blog Baby, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

  • Ever since he called my seminal work Prefatory Remarks Towards a Prolegomena to Any Future Study of the Philosophy of Philosophy a “jejune and meretricious farrago composed of equal parts nonsense, self-contradiction, okra and cumin,” I'd had it in for the guy.

    OWS Boston: Members Only Con Chapman 2011

  • Historically, Daumier makes the word seminal an understatement; his great-great-grandsons embellish our daily op-ed pages, and the Daumier estate still holds the patent on Jules Feiffer. '

    Even Mightier Than The Pen 2008

  • Consider the magnitude of Mr. Brown's achievement: His capture of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat was based on an unambiguous promise to fight the march toward universal health care in the United States, which Kennedy himself described as the seminal cause of his life.

    American Thinker 2010

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