seeds

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of seed.

   The farmer soaked the seeds overnight to speed up germination.

   Heirloom tomato seeds can be saved and replanted year after year.

   Note

   Here the plural counts seeds one by one. That matters because seed can also be a mass noun: a gardener may sow seed by the handful, an amount nobody counts. Use seeds when the individual kernels are in view (soaked, saved, planted in rows) and seed for the bulk. The plural also covers seed-like fruits, tubers and bulbs, and even fragments of coral, but not the uncountable sense of semen.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of seed.

   The tournament committee seeds the top players into separate brackets.

   The aircraft seeds the clouds with silver iodide to encourage rainfall.

   Note

   The verb form shares its spelling with the plural noun, so only the sentence tells them apart. Nearly every use takes an object: someone seeds a lawn, a dress with beads, a tournament draw, or a file left for others to download over peer-to-peer networks. The exception is a plant shedding its own seed. There the object turns back on the subject, as when a weed seeds itself across the bed.

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