germ cell

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

• noun An ovum or a sperm cell or one of its developmental precursors.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A germ when it is a cell, or has the morphological value of a cell; an impregnated ovum about to germinate, but not yet become more than a single cell; a cytula.
• noun One of the similar cells of a germinating organism; a cell resulting from segmentation of the vitellus; a blastomere.
• noun In biology, a reproductive cell; an ovum or spermatozoön: opposed to body cell, or somatic cell.

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

• (Biol.) A cell, of either sex, directly concerned in the production of a new organism.

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

• noun cytology A cell that is part of the germ line: a gametocyte, an ovum or a sperm cell.

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

• noun a spermatozoon or an ovum; a cell responsible for transmitting DNA to the next generation