- a young animal or plant in the very early stages of development before birth, or before coming out of its egg or seed, especially a human egg in the first eight weeks after fertilization
- the current debate over cloning human embryos
Extra ExamplesTopics Biologyc1- The couple has produced three embryos for implantation.
- Two or three embryos are implanted into the woman's body.
- frozen embryos stored at a fertility clinic
- the cells of an early embryo
Oxford Collocations Dictionaryadjective- developing
- fertilized
- early
- …
- create
- produce
- implant
- …
- develop
- development
- growth
- cell
- …
Definitions on the go
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- a thing at a very early stage of development
- the embryo of an idea
- an embryo central bank
Word Originlate Middle English: via late Latin from Greek embruon ‘fetus’, from em- ‘into’ + bruein ‘swell, grow’.
Idioms
See embryo in the Oxford Advanced American DictionarySee embryo in the Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic Englishin embryo
- existing but not yet fully developed
- The idea already existed in embryo in his earlier novels.
Check pronunciation:
embryo