embryo
noun
Simple meaning
The young animal's earliest stages in the mother's body.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
ehmbreeohSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɛmbɹioʊ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
In a viviparous animal, the young animal's earliest stages in the mother's body.
An animal organism in the early stages of growth and differentiation that in higher forms merge into fetal stages but in lower forms terminate in commencement of larval life
In the reproductive cycle, the stage after the fertilization of the egg that precedes the development into a fetus.
An organism in the earlier stages of development before it emerges from the egg, or before metamorphosis.
In a human, usually the cell growth of the child within the mother's body, through the end of the seventh week of pregnancy.
figurative
The beginning; the first stage of anything.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: In a viviparous animal, the young animal's earliest stages in the mother's body.
Used this way, embryo is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use embryo
- “The tiny embryo began to develop inside the seed.”noun
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.