Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Sperm
/spɜːrm/noun
The male reproductive cell, or the fluid carrying it.
The Greek roots
σπέρμα
spérma
seed, that which is sown
Literally: “seed”
Follow a root:σπέρμα4 words
The story of the word
σπέρμα comes from σπείρω, to scatter or sow, and Greek used it for plant seed as readily as for semen; the metaphor was never felt as one. English took the medical sense in the late fourteenth century. The sperm whale is a misunderstanding that stuck: spermaceti, the waxy oil in the animal's enormous head, was taken for its seed, and the name outlived the correction by two centuries.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
spermatozoonsporediasporasporadic
In a sentence
A single sample contains tens of millions of sperm, most of them going nowhere.