embryo

noun

1. In the reproductive cycle, the stage after the fertilization of the egg that precedes the development into a fetus.

   “SE onset depends on a complex network of interactions among plant growth regulators, mainly auxins and cytokinins, during the proembryogenic early stages, and ethylene and gibberellic and abscisic acids later in the development of somatic embryos.”

   “In situ hybridisations were performed on devitellinised embryos still wrapped around the yolk and on embryos with the yolk dissected away.”

   “Though scientists do not know how stress affects gestation, Fukuda theorizes that the vulnerability of Y-bearing sperm cells, male embryos and/or male fetuses to stress is why “subtle significant changes in sex ratios” occur.”

   “They include cells that would typically go on to develop a yolk sac, a placenta and the embryo itself.”

2. An organism in the earlier stages of development before it emerges from the egg, or before metamorphosis.
3. In a viviparous animal, the young animal's earliest stages in the mother's body.
4. In a human, usually the cell growth of the child within the mother's body, through the end of the seventh week of pregnancy.
5. A rudimentary plant contained in the seed.
6. (figuratively)The beginning; the first stage of anything.

   “[…]while the Company little ſuſpected what a noble Work I had then in Embryo […]”

   “it dives into the heart of the observed, and there espies evil, as it were, in the first embryo […]”

   “Lord Lufton, with his barony and twenty thousand a year, might be accepted as just good enough; but failing him there was an embryo marquis, whose fortune would be more than ten times as great, all ready to accept his child!”