OVUM • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Ovum

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/ˈoʊvəm/ Listen

noun

Ovum n. (pl. L. ova, E. ovums)

(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.

(Arch.) One of the series of egg-shaped ornaments into which the ovolo is often carved.

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Etymology of 'Ovum'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Ovum" Quotes from Famous Books

... is ripening, the womb is preparing to receive it. This preparation consists of a reinforced blood supply brought to its lining. If fertilization takes place, the fertilized ovule or ovum will cling to the lining of the womb and there gather its nourishment. If fertilization does not take place, the ovum passes out of the body and the uterus throws off its surplus blood supply. This is called the menstrual period. ...

— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... the germ. About the middle of the eighteenth century, Caspar Friedrich Wolff discovered the true development; but his work was ignored, and it was only fifty years later that modern embryology began to work on the right line. K.E. von Baer made it clear that the fertilised ovum divides into a group of cells, and that the various organs of the body are developed from these layers of cells, in the ...

— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... different members, however, of the family present, as Schiodte remarks, "a long series of forms exhibiting a gradual transition from Hippoglossus pinguis, which does not in any considerable degree alter the shape in which it leaves the ovum, to the soles, which are ...

— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... In Var. under Dom., Ed. ii. vol. I. p. 295, such eggs are said to be laid early in each season by the black Labrador duck. In the next sentence in the text the author does not distinguish the characters of the vegetable capsule from those of the ovum. ...

— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin

... canal gradually increases until it reaches its ovarian extremity. The mucous lining of the tube is clothed by a single layer of hair-like epithelium, whose current sweeps from the ovarian toward the uterine end of the tube; and it is these movements which propel the ovum from the ...

— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith

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