germinate
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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Jumping straight into a list of major to-dos would leave little time for ideas to germinate.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 8, 2026
For example, some seeds in the soil rely on heat shock or smoke to germinate.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 27, 2025
And getting certification is a rigorous, costly process, as seeds need to be tested in a laboratory for their purity and things like how well they germinate.
From BBC ● Jul. 20, 2025
Southern California received heavy rain last summer, unlike its usually dry summers, which she said probably stimulated flowers to germinate out of season.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 20, 2024
The seeds of many wild plant species actually must pass through an animal’s gut before they can germinate.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
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Normally, a pollen grain that sticks to the stigma of a flower during pollination germinates into a long tube that grows straight and unbranched through the ovary to the ovules, where fertilisation takes place.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 16, 2024
Phi29 instructs the cell to package its DNA into the spore, killing the budding bacteria once the spore germinates.
From Salon ● Sep. 21, 2022
Community germinates during class, through empathetic eye contact with a neighbor while breathing heavily during a tough workout.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 10, 2022
The need some feel to atone germinates a perceived opportunity for redemption; humans initially, ignorantly and irrationally feared the tiger-like creature, believing it to be a danger to them and their sheep.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 26, 2021
But let such a grain of barley fall on suitable soil under normal conditions; a complete individual change at once takes place in it under the influence of heat and moisture, it germinates.
From Landmarks of Scientific Socialism "Anti-Duehring" by Friedrich Engels
It is easy to laugh at the childlike naiveté of sending seeds to Mars, an idea that never germinated.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 13, 2026
Once the grains germinated in a laboratory, the seedlings were planted in water in June, and harvesting began in early October.
From Barron's ● Oct. 31, 2025
Boxes full of fresh onions in the courtyard have now germinated.
From BBC ● Feb. 15, 2025
The idea of mixed selectivity germinated in 2000 when Miller and colleague John Duncan defended a surprising result from a study of cognition in Miller's lab.
From Science Daily ● May 10, 2024
So they saw that they had to plant more seedpod trees for the sake of the oil, but the pods were so hard that they seldom germinated.
From "The Amber Spyglass" by Philip Pullman
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And while the concept for the memorial is still germinating, Nina has already pinned down the title.
From BBC ● Jan. 21, 2026
Deadwood-decomposing fungi feed germinating orchids, providing the carbon their tiny seeds don't have.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 8, 2025
“I’m very interested in committing myself to helping raw milk emerge as a constructive, high standards, healthy, wonderful, germinating, delicious food.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 5, 2024
In a final step, the researchers used a chemical process to confirm whether the excreted seeds were capable of germinating.
From Science Magazine ● May 8, 2024
I put the drawing of the man with the germinating brain in my room on the wall where I can see it when I roll over.
From "Counting by 7s" by Holly Goldberg Sloan
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Vocabulary lists containing germinate
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The Martian
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