spore

A small, usually single-celled reproductive body that is resistant to adverse environmental conditions and is capable of growing into a new organism, produced especially by certain fungi, algae, protozoans, and nonseedbearing plants such as mosses and ferns.

A megaspore or microspore.

A dormant nonreproductive body formed by certain bacteria often in response to a lack of nutrients, and characteristically being highly resistant to heat, desiccation, and destruction by chemicals or enzymes.

To produce spores.

A. Middle English form of spur.

In botany, a single cell which becomes free and is capable of developing directly into a new morphologically and physiologically independent individual.

In zoology, the seed or germ of an organism, of minute size, and not of the morphological value of a cell, such as one of the microscopic bodies into which the substance of many protozoans is resolved in the process of reproduction by sporation; a sporule; a gemmule, as of a sponge.

In biology, an organic body of extremely minute size, and not subject to ordinary classification; a sporozoid or zoöspore; a living germ, as a seed of certain diseases.

Figuratively, a germ; a seed; a source of being.