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Ovum   Listen
noun
Ovum  n.  (pl. L. ova, E. ovums)  
1.
(Biol.) A more or less spherical and transparent cell, which by a process of multiplication and growth develops into a mass of cells, constituting a new individual like the parent; an egg, spore, germ, or germ cell. Note: The ovum is a typical cell, with a cell wall, cell substance, nucleus, and nucleolus. In man and the higher animals the cell wall, a vertically striated membrane, is called the zona pellucida; the cell contents, the vitellus; the nucleus, the germinal vesicle; and the nucleolus, the germinal spot. The diameter of the ripe ovum in man and the domestic animals varies between 1-200 and 1-120 of an inch.
2.
(Arch.) One of the series of egg-shaped ornaments into which the ovolo is often carved.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ovum" Quotes from Famous Books



... phrases sonorous, So daintily chosen, so tunefully matched, Though you soar with the wings of the cherubim o'er us, The ovum was human from which you ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... demonstrate the connecting links. Do you remember, a few days ago we were talking about the distress of matrimony (Ehenot), and about the inconsistency of permitting the practice of coitus as long as no impregnation takes place, while every delinquency after the ovum and the semen meet and a foetus is formed is punished as a crime? In connection with this, we also recalled the mediaeval controversy about the moment of time at which the soul is really lodged in the foetus, since the concept of murder ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... heredity depends upon the fact that a small portion of the effective substance of the germ, the germ-plasm, remains unchanged during the development of the ovum into an organism, and that this part of the germ-plasm serves as a foundation from which the germ-cells of the new organism are produced. There is, therefore, continuity of the germ-plasm from one ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... physiologically, as showing the wide limits of possible variation which thus may even involve the sex, "for an ovule to develop pollen within its interior," says Mr. Salter, "is equivalent to an ovum in an animal being converted into a capsule of spermatozoa. It is a conversion of germ into sperm, the most complete violation of individuality and unity of sex. * * * * The occurrence of an antheroid ovule and a normal ovule on the same carpellary leaf realises the simplest and the most ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... the left are six spermatozoa, or male-elements, male germ-cells. At the right is an ovum, egg, female ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham

... his discovery was as follows: The ovum of an animal is a single cell, and when it begins to develop into an embryo it first simply divides into two halves, producing two cells (Fig, 8, a and b). Each of these in turn divides, giving four, and by repeated divisions of ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn

... other organs convenient for individual existence. But most animals, especially the more perfect, do not constitute an aggregate of similar parts united by one trunk, and therefore propagation by division is in them impossible. The ovum, when separated from the parent, is an entire animal only potentially; during its development, the essential parts which constitute the actual whole are produced. In the case of the polyps, we have ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... in the female is sometimes caused by a morbid adhesion of the tube to a portion of the ovary. By what power the mouth of the tube is directed toward a particular portion of an ovary from which the ovum is about to be discharged, remains entirely unknown, as does also the precise nature of the cause ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... by "immortality" in a germplasm is continuity. That is, while an individual may consist of a colony of millions of cells, all of these spring from one cell and it a germ cell—the fertilized ovum. This first divides to form a new group of germ cells, which are within the embryo or new body when it begins to develop, and so on through indefinite generations. Thus the germ cells in an individual living ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... understand that the word "twins" is a vague expression, which covers two very dissimilar events—the one corresponding to the progeny of animals that usually bear more than one at a birth, each of the progeny being derived from a separate ovum, while the other event is due to the development of two germinal spots in the same ovum. In the latter case they are enveloped in the same membrane, and all such twins are found invariably to be of the same sex. The consequence ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... when it is directed to a passive aim. The second, the biological significance of masculine and feminine, is the one which permits the clearest determination. Masculine and feminine are here characterized by the presence of semen or ovum and through the functions emanating from them. The activity and its secondary manifestations, like stronger developed muscles, aggression, a greater intensity of libido, are as a rule soldered to the biological masculinity but not necessarily connected with it, for there ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... brain and intelligence, growth and development, are modified precisely as the size and shape of certain crystals are modified by the presence or absence of ingredients in an apparently homogeneous solution. A fertilized ovum, in which the predecessor of the thyroid gland is present, that is to say, in which there is the seed and soil for its sprouting, looks the same as one without that formative material. Yet, when the time comes for the internal secretion of the thyroid to put in its oar in the metabolic ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.



Words linked to "Ovum" :   ootid, female reproductive system, ovulate, fertilized ovum, egg cell, egg



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