From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishspawnspawn1 /spɔːn $ spɒːn/ verb 1 [transitive]CAUSE to make a series of things happen or start to exist New technology has spawned new business opportunities.2 [intransitive, transitive]HBAHBF if a fish or frog spawns, it produces eggs in large quantities at the same time→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
spawn• The Mac creators are emblematic of a new kind of artist spawned by the protean nature of the computer.• Through the information technologies they have spawned, computers step up the pace of the ticking.• The shortages naturally spawned corruption as officials, themselves impoverished, exchanged favors for bribes.• There is no mechanism whereby clouds of particular shapes can spawn daughter clouds resembling themselves.• I have a cynical notion that all religious revivals spawn from times of extreme economic disparity.• It also involved the fate of the greatest spawning run of salmon in the world.• The Arab-Israeli War of 1973 spawned the 1973 oil crisis.• When the Discus spawn the eggs will hatch in 60 hours.spawnspawn2 noun [uncountable] HBAHBFthe eggs of a fish or frog laid together in a soft massExamples from the Corpus
spawn• Daemon spawn won't be able to home in and manifest themselves.• It appears from monitoring equipment on individual trout that about 75 percent of these fish are from natural spawn.• Triumph followed triumph for the spawn of Naggaroth.• She then releases the spawn, trailing it in and amongst the stems and foliage of submerged plant life.• We're all children of the Serpent, the spawn of the Form Manipulator.• An older pair tending their spawn.Origin spawn1 (1400-1500) Anglo-French espaundre, from Old French espandre “to spread out”, from Latin expandere; → EXPAND 