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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
sperm
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a sperm/egg donor (=a man who gives sperm or a woman who gives eggs to help someone else have a baby)
▪ Her husband was infertile so they conceived using a sperm donor.
sperm bank
sperm whale
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
bank
▪ The chief donors to sperm banks were medical students.
▪ Fertility clinics and sperm banks in the United States often are privately run and are subject to few government restrictions.
▪ In person, however, they have matured about as much as a sperm in a deep frozen sperm bank.
▪ But where had his Glover genes come from if his father was in a sperm bank?
▪ Carol had told him a thousand kids a year came from sperm banks in the early eighties.
cell
▪ The sperm cell has no muscles.
▪ When the creature matures, the parasitic sperm cells eat out its gonads and replace them with themselves.
count
▪ Men are still able to father children into their seventies, though their sperm count is lower than in their youth.
▪ Although that may seem like plenty, low sperm counts often are warnings of problems with sperm function.
▪ As it turned out, his sperm count appeared normal but his wife continued to fail to conceive.
▪ The only thing Rob could think up as a possible Hank Camden failure was the likelihood of a low sperm count.
▪ And one has to remember that sperm counts also show a natural seasonal variation.
▪ For the vast majority of men, the reason for a low sperm count can not be explained.
▪ Strictly speaking, there is as yet no definitive evidence for declining sperm counts.
▪ High exposure to dioxins has been associated with cancer, low sperm counts, behavioural problems and diabetes.
whale
▪ The sperm whales have been stranded in Scapa Flow for several weeks.
▪ The nobler of the two is the sperm whale.
▪ The Ligurian Sea, where the explosion occurred, is an important area for sperm whales.
▪ A whale is killed-a great sperm whale.
▪ The sperm whale dives to a mile and more and can stay under for two hours.
▪ Fourth, Ishmael makes it clear that an enraged sperm whale will charge and sink a large sailing vessel like the Pequod.
▪ Taking yet another example, compare the visual fields of man, rabbits and the sperm whale.
▪ There he found the skeleton of a whale, a sperm whale, which had become a shrine for the natives.
■ VERB
produce
▪ The few remaining hermaphroditic mice are at a premium because only they can produce the sperm that the all-female mice still need.
▪ Modern Western men are producing less sperm than formerly.
▪ A male is defined as the gender that produces sperm or pollen: small, mobile, multitudinous gametes.
▪ The number of offspring a male can produce depends on his ability to produce sperm and inseminate females.
▪ The fly therefore produces half as much sperm as normal.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
blood/sperm/organ bank
▪ But where had his Glover genes come from if his father was in a sperm bank?
▪ Fertility clinics and sperm banks in the United States often are privately run and are subject to few government restrictions.
▪ In 1987, the agency had directed blood banks to similarly disqualify donors who have received pituitary-derived growth hormone.
▪ In person, however, they have matured about as much as a sperm in a deep frozen sperm bank.
▪ Still, there was always food here at the blood bank as well as plenty of sweetened fluids to quickly restore energy.
▪ The chief donors to sperm banks were medical students.
▪ The World Around Us Fascinating topics for young learners ranging from blood banks to deserts.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ All were then fertilised with sperm from her husband.
▪ It makes an interesting contrast with another related health issue: falling sperm counts.
▪ Many of his sperm do not even try to fertilize her eggs but instead either attack other sperm or block their passage.
▪ Once it is penetrated by the single sperm, the egg becomes impervious.
▪ This makes the sperm, like all rapidly developing cells, especially vulnerable to damage from chemicals or radiation.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
sperm

Gamete \Gam"ete\ (g[a^]m"[=e]t; g[.a]*m[=e]t"; the latter usually in compounds), n. [Gr. gameth` wife, or game`ths husband, fr. gamei^n to marry.] (Biol.) A sexual cell or germ cell having a single set of unpaired chromosomes; a conjugating cell which unites with another of like or unlike character to form a new individual. In Bot., gamete designates esp. the similar sex cells of the lower thallophytes which unite by conjugation, forming a zygospore. The gametes of higher plants are of two sorts, sperm (male) and egg (female); their union is called fertilization, and the resulting zygote an o["o]spore. In Zo["o]l., gamete is most commonly used of the sexual cells of certain Protozoa, though also extended to the germ cells of higher forms.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
sperm

"male seminal fluid," late 14c., probably from Old French esperme "seed, sperm" (13c.) and directly from Late Latin sperma "seed, semen," from Greek sperma "the seed of plants, also of animals," literally "that which is sown," from speirein "to sow, scatter," from PIE *sper-mn-, from root *sper- (4) "to strew" (see sprout (v.)). Sperm bank is attested from 1963. For sperm whale see spermaceti.

Wiktionary
sperm

n. 1 (context uncountable English) semen; the generative substance of male animals. 2 (context cytology English) The reproductive cell or gamete of the male; a spermatozoon. 3 (context chemistry English) sperm oil; whale oil from a sperm whale; spermaceti.

WordNet
sperm

n. the male reproductive cell; the male gamete; "a sperm is mostly a nucleus surrounded by little other cellular material" [syn: sperm cell, spermatozoon, spermatozoan]

Wikipedia
Sperm (album)

Sperm is the second studio album by the German band Oomph!. This album would drastically change the direction and sound of the band from their heavily synthesizer-based, EBM debut album. The band at this point decided to change to a heavy metal based style while retaining many elements of their EBM origins and influences.

Sperm is widely regarded as the establishing album of the Neue Deutsche Härte genre.

Sperm

Sperm is the male reproductive cell and is derived from the Greek word (σπέρμα) sperma (meaning "seed"). In the types of sexual reproduction known as anisogamy and its subtype oogamy, there is a marked difference in the size of the gametes with the smaller one being termed the "male" or sperm cell. A uniflagellar sperm cell that is motile is referred to as a spermatozoon, whereas a non-motile sperm cell is referred to as a spermatium. Sperm cells cannot divide and have a limited life span, but after fusion with egg cells during fertilization, a new organism begins developing, starting as a totipotent zygote. The human sperm cell is haploid, so that its 23 chromosomes can join the 23 chromosomes of the female egg to form a diploid cell. In mammals, sperm develops in the testicles and is released from the penis. It is also possible to extract sperm through TESE. Some sperm banks hold up to of sperm.

Sperm (disambiguation)

Sperm commonly refers to:

  • Sperm (cell), the male gamete involved in heterogamous sexual reproduction
  • Spermatozoon (zoosperm), a sperm cell propelled by a single flagellum, found in most animals
  • Semen ("sperma"), the bodily fluid containing spermatozoa

Sperm may also refer to:

  • Sperm (album), the second studio album by the German band Oomph!
  • Sperm whale, a whale of the family Physeteridae

Usage examples of "sperm".

But in the great Sperm Whale, this high and mighty god-like dignity inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified, that gazing on it, in that full front view, you feel the Deity and the dread powers more forcibly than in beholding any other object in living nature.

A red silk curtain scented with rose oil, musk, sperm, rectal mucus, ozone and raw meat goes up on a hospital ward of boys covered with phosphorescent red blotches that glow and steam the fever smell off them, shuddering, squirming, shivering, eyes burning, legs up, teeth bare, whispering the ancient evil fever words.

When an ovum bearing maleness meets the invariably maleness-bearing sperm, the resultant individual is a male, of course, and he is male all through.

It would be refining too much, perhaps, even considering his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards the White Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all sperm whales, and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale would prove to be the hated one he hunted.

In some particulars, perhaps the most imposing physiognomical view to be had of the Sperm Whale, is that of the full front of his head.

But then one should not forget that van Leeuwenhoek also looked at human semen, observed sperm, and described each individual spermatozoon as a perfectly formed, minuscule mannikin, thus reinforcing a long-held preformationist superstition about human reproduction that took at least another century to outgrow.

Valmoril, a subspecies of humanity that had spread through the isolated Corithi Cluster, living secluded there for so long that by now they could only interbreed with other races by pretreating sperm and eggs with enzymes.

So he reamed and plunged until upon reaching a shuddering climax the sperm imprisoned in his testicles raced up his urethra into her vagina.

The perp was a secretor, and from his sperm they determined he had AB blood.

The male releases a spermatophore, which contains the sperm, and the female picks it up at a later time.

This painting showed a whale hunta great sperm whale, draped with harpoon lines, thrashing about in its death throes, a huge jet of bright arterial blood rising from its spouter, while its flukes dashed a boatful of harpooners into the sea.

For that strange spectacle observable in all sperm whales dying--the turning sunwards of the head, and so expiring-- that strange spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, somehow to Ahab conveyed a wondrousness unknown before.

And as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth.

When his moment of rapture comes, he suppresses, with great effort, his urge to thrust, instead keeping absolutely still while the sperm issues from him in one smooth, uncontracted flow.

Last year epidemiologists from the University of Missouri found that atrazine may lead to reproductive abnormalities in humans, including sperm counts that are 50 percent below normal.