spawn

«spawn» in Mova's school dictionary: When fish or frogs spawn, they lay lots of eggs in water — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

verb (spawn, spawns, spawned, spawning); noun (spawn — uncountable: frogspawn)

meaning for a pupil

1) When fish or frogs spawn, they lay lots of eggs in water. tree →

2) Spawn is the mass of eggs laid by fish, frogs or toads, like frogspawn. tree →

3) To spawn something means to cause many new things to appear, as in the film spawned three sequels. tree →

4) (games) In video games, to spawn means for a player or character to appear in the game world; the spawn point is where they appear. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science lessons on life cycles, frogs lay frogspawn in ponds in spring; it hatches into tadpoles. Salmon swim upriver to spawn. In computer games, players spawn and respawn after losing a life. In everyday talk, one popular thing can spawn many copies.

examples

• Frogs spawn in ponds in early spring. tree →
• We saw a clump of frogspawn in the school pond. tree →
• Salmon swim up the river to spawn. tree →
• The film spawned a whole series of toys. tree →
• In the game you spawn next to a castle. tree →
• After you lose a life, you respawn at the last checkpoint. tree →
• Zombies spawn at night in that game. tree →

note

Spawn as a noun is uncountable: some spawn, not a spawn. Frogspawn is written as one word. Respawn means spawn again. Older and formal use: spawn can sound negative, as in spawn of the devil in old stories.

In the corpora

• In March a garden pond can fill with clumps of jelly dotted with black eggs: common frog spawn.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «spawn» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.