"thoughtseed" meaning in All languages combined

See thoughtseed on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Forms: thoughtseeds [plural], thought-seed [alternative], thought seed [alternative]
Etymology: Possibly from a calque of German Gedankensamen, equivalent to thought + seed. Etymology templates: {{calque|en|de|Gedankensamen|nocap=1}} calque of German Gedankensamen, {{com|en|thought|seed}} thought + seed Head templates: {{en-noun|~}} thoughtseed (countable and uncountable, plural thoughtseeds)
  1. A metaphor for the very beginning of a concept, belief, or intention that has the potential to grow, develop, and eventually influence future reality. Tags: countable, uncountable
    Sense id: en-thoughtseed-en-noun-qQD5brt7 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries

Inflected forms

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  "etymology_text": "Possibly from a calque of German Gedankensamen, equivalent to thought + seed.",
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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          "ref": "1896, Mrs. George A. Paull, Seed Thoughts for Mothers, page 210:",
          "text": "Surely the tiniest thoughtseed planted so long ago in the mother-heart of the world ought to have led us ere this to see that, whether we know it or not, we do weave garments for our children's spirits, before they are responsible, by our attitude towards them and towards life.",
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          "ref": "1905, International Molders' and Foundry Workers' Journal:",
          "text": "Even so you yourself sow thoughtseed among your friends and union and family, even if you don't know you are a-sowing.",
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          "ref": "1997, (Please provide the book title or journal name):",
          "text": "[…] in discussing Vygotsky's notion of inner speech, elucidates, \"Unformulated in words, a thoughtseed remains vague and provides only the possibility of having a meaning\" (p. 44).",
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      "glosses": [
        "A metaphor for the very beginning of a concept, belief, or intention that has the potential to grow, develop, and eventually influence future reality."
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Download raw JSONL data for thoughtseed meaning in All languages combined (2.4kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-09-09 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (ccec6f1 and 4deed51). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.