Spawn Means Eggs, Offspring and Respawning
Spawn is the mass of eggs produced by fish and amphibians. Gaming took the word for appearing in a new place.
Spawn is the mass of eggs laid by fish, frogs and molluscs, and to spawn is to produce them. Computing borrowed the word twice: in Unix a process *spawns* a child process, and in video games a character *spawns* at a point on the map and *respawns* after dying. Both keep the sense of producing something new that then acts on its own. The word comes from Old French *espandre*, to spread out, related to *expand*.
- Fish or frog eggs. *Frogspawn.*
- To lay eggs. *Salmon spawn upstream.*
- To give rise to. *Spawned a genre.*
- To appear (gaming). *Respawn point.*
- Old French — *espandre*, to spread. *The source.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | spawn | Spawn. |
| Verb | spawn | Spawn eggs. |
| Past | spawned | Spawned. |
| Compound | frogspawn | Frogspawn. |
| Gaming | respawn | Respawn. |
- The pond was full of frogspawn.Nature.
- Salmon spawn where they hatched.Behaviour.
- The player respawned at the base.Gaming.
Spawning in nature
- External fertilisation — eggs and sperm released into water
- Salmon return to the stream where they hatched
- Coral spawns in mass synchronised events tied to the moon
- Frogspawn forms clumps; toadspawn forms strings
- Mushroom spawn is a separate use, meaning mycelium for growing
Anglo-French *espaundre*, from Old French *espandre*, to spread out or shed, from Latin *expandere*.
What is the difference between frogspawn and toadspawn?
Frogspawn comes in floating clumps; toadspawn comes in long strings wrapped around water plants.
Why do games use spawn?
From the sense of producing something new that then acts independently, the same reason Unix uses it for creating a child process.