# offspring

Pronunciation: US say "AWF-spring" /ˈɔfspɹɪŋ/; UK say "OF-spring" /ˈɒfspɹɪŋ/

## Noun

1. A person's son or daughter; their child.
   - Simple: A son or daughter of a particular parent.
   - _His offspring inherited both his temperament and his stubbornness._
   - _She regarded the young man as her only offspring._
2. The progeny or young of an animal or plant.
   - Simple: The babies or young produced by an animal or plant.
   - _Salmon swim upstream to spawn, then die without ever seeing their offspring._
   - _The breeder kept the mare's strongest offspring for racing._
3. Anyone descended from a particular person, whether a child, a grandchild, or someone many generations later.
   - Simple: Someone who comes from a person's family line, even many generations later.
   - _He claimed to be an offspring of an ancient noble house._
   - _The dynasty's offspring scattered throughout Europe over five generations._
4. Something brought into being; the product of a person's or group's efforts.
   - Simple: Something created as the result of work or effort.
   - _The festival was the offspring of a few friends' shared enthusiasm._
   - _Modern jazz is in many ways the offspring of the blues._
5. A process started or launched by another process.
   - Simple: A computer process that another process starts up.
   - _The parent process spawned an offspring to manage the network connection._
   - _If the main process crashes, its offspring may keep running in the background._

## Origin

From Middle English ofspring, from Old English ofspring meaning 'offspring, descendants, posterity', formed from off- plus spring, and comparable to Icelandic afspringur ('offspring').

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/offspring (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).