Tournament Seeds Are Named After Planting
A seed is a plant's reproductive unit. In sport it means a ranked player placed in the draw.
A seed is the unit from which a plant grows, and in sport a ranked competitor placed strategically in a draw. The sporting sense is a gardening metaphor from 1890s American tennis: the strongest players were scattered through the draw like seeds sown across a bed, so they would not meet each other early. The word describes the act of distribution, not the ranking itself. Some seeds stay viable astonishingly long — a date palm was grown from a two-thousand-year-old seed found at Masada.
- A plant's unit. *Sowing seeds.*
- A ranked player. *The top seed.*
- An origin. *The seeds of doubt.*
- To sow. *Seeding a lawn.*
- Old English — *sæd*. *The source.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | seed | A seed. |
| Plural | seeds | Seeds. |
| Verb | seed | Seeding. |
| Adjective | seedy | Seedy. |
| Related | sow | To sow. |
- Plant the seeds in spring.Garden.
- She is the second seed.Sport.
- The seeds of the idea.Figurative.
How long seeds last
- Onion and parsnip — often only a year
- Tomato and cucumber — five to ten years
- Lotus — over a thousand years in the right conditions
- A Masada date palm was grown from a seed about 2,000 years old
- Cool, dry and dark storage extends life dramatically
Old English *sæd*, of Germanic origin, related to *sow*.
Why are ranked players called seeds?
From a gardening image: the best players are scattered through the draw like seeds across a bed so they do not meet early.
How long can a seed stay viable?
It varies enormously. Onion seed may last a year, while a date palm has been grown from a seed about two thousand years old.