Definitions

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

  • noun An organ in animals that produces gametes, especially a testis or ovary.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In biology, a germ-gland; a germinal or reproductive gland or organ, in the widest sense, producing sperm-cells or egg-cells; an ovary or a spermary, of whatever kind, in a primitive or an indifferent state.

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

  • noun (Anat.) One of the masses of generative tissue primitively alike in both sexes, but giving rise to either an ovary or a testis; a generative gland; a germ gland.

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

  • noun anatomy A sex organ that produces gametes; specifically, a testicle or ovary.
  • noun slang, in the plural The testicles.

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

  • noun a gland in which gametes (sex cells) are produced

Etymologies

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

[New Latin gonas, gonad-, from Greek gonos, procreation, genitals; see genə- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Ancient Greek γονή (gonē, "seed, begetting, birth, offspring"), from γίγνεσθαι (gignesthai, "be born").

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