Definitions

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

  • noun A reproductive cell having the haploid number of chromosomes, especially a mature sperm or egg capable of fusing with a gamete of the opposite sex to produce a zygote.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A general term for the mature germ-cells, either male (spermatozoön) or female (ovum), which unite to form the zygote.
  • noun In biology, a propagative protoplasmic body which unites with a similar or dissimilar body to form a spore, called a zygote, the latter being either a zygospore or an oöspore. Mobile gametes resembling zoöspores are called planogametes or zoögametes.

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

  • noun (Biol.) A sexual cell or germ cell having a single set of unpaired chromosomes; a conjugating cell which unites with another of like or unlike character to form a new individual. In Bot., gamete designates esp. the similar sex cells of the lower thallophytes which unite by conjugation, forming a zygospore. The gametes of higher plants are of two sorts, sperm (male) and egg (female); their union is called fertilization, and the resulting zygote an oöspore. In Zoöl., gamete is most commonly used of the sexual cells of certain Protozoa, though also extended to the germ cells of higher forms.

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

  • noun cytology A reproductive cell (male (sperm) or female (egg)) that has only half the usual number of chromosomes.

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

  • noun a mature sexual reproductive cell having a single set of unpaired chromosomes

Etymologies

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

[New Latin gameta, from Greek gametē, wife and gametēs, husband, from gamein, to marry, from gamos, marriage; see gemə- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek γαμετή ("wife"), γαμέτης ("husband"), ultimately from γάμος ("marriage").

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Examples

  • A variation of IVF, called gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT) consists of the immediate injection of the ova into the fallopian tube after combination with semen without determining whether they have been successfully fertilized.

    Reproductive Technology, New (NRT). leBeit Yoreh 2009

  • In females, the gamete is the egg, fewer and larger cells produced in an environment capable of supplying nutrition to a developing embryo.

    Sexual Reproduction: Observations 2005

  • In females, the gamete is the egg, fewer and larger cells produced in an environment capable of supplying nutrition to a developing embryo.

    ideonexus.com » 2005 » March 2005

  • Marriage is often actually defined as the gamete of the state.

    reddit.com: what's new online! 2009

  • Traditionally, many people who have gone to sperm banks have indeed wanted to take the man out of the sperm, preferring to pretend that what they're buying is just a "gamete," which came from, well, the gamete factory, not from a living, breathing man whose personality and looks they may find practically duplicated in their child.

    Louise Sloan: You Can Take the Sperm Out of the Man, But Can You Take the Man Out of the Sperm? 2008

  • Pratten, who now works as a journalist in Toronto, filed her lawsuit in 2008, seeking to have the Adoption Act declared unconstitutional because it discriminates against children who are born through "gamete" donors, which includes sperm and egg donors.

    canada.com Top Stories 2010

  • The chance of an individual gamete which is a (d u) recombinant combining with another (d u) recombinant is (p/2) x (p/2).

    OpenWetWare - Recent changes [en] 2010

  • Adoption Act declared unconstitutional because it discriminates against children who are born through "gamete" donors, including sperm donors.

    canada.com Top Stories 2010

  • These are the new sequences, created from a hybrid of Andorian DNA as well as wholly new code intended to fill the gaps left by genetic deficiencies contained within an original gamete after fertilization.

    Star Trek: Typhon Pact Paths of Disharmony Dayton Ward 2011

  • The theory she presented for altering the genetic code in an Andorian gamete is straightforward enough.

    Star Trek: Typhon Pact Paths of Disharmony Dayton Ward 2011

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