Literary notes about germinate (AI summary)
The word "germinate" has been employed in literature to evoke both literal and metaphorical processes of growth and emergence. In botanical and practical contexts, authors like Ukers and the Northern Nut Growers Association describe germination as the physical process experienced by coffee seeds, nuts, and fungal spores, highlighting the careful conditions needed for life to break forth ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5]). In contrast, writers such as Emerson, Rousseau, Helen Keller, Whitman, and sociologists like Burgess and Park use "germinate" metaphorically, depicting the gradual and sometimes challenging emergence of ideas, qualities, or social changes—from the seeds of reason and patriotism to the growth of vocabulary and revolutionary thought ([6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13]). This dual usage enriches the word's resonance, bridging natural processes with the evolution of human thought and society.
- During the six to seven weeks required for the coffee seed to germinate, the soil must be kept moist and shaded and thoroughly weeded.
— from All About Coffee by William H. Ukers - It takes the seed about six weeks to germinate and to appear above ground.
— from All About Coffee by William H. Ukers - It is a microscopic fungus whose spores, carried by the wind, adhere to and germinate upon the leaves of the coffee tree
— from All About Coffee by William H. Ukers - The nuts will germinate and seedlings have been raised.
— from Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting - The nuts germinate well and make trees quickly.
— from Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting - Thus there is no sleep, no pause, no preservation, but all things renew, germinate and spring.
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson - Before taking his disciple into his confidence, he tried to get the seeds of reason and kindness which he had sown in my heart to germinate.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Thus her vocabulary grows apace, and the new words germinate and bring forth new ideas; and they are the stuff out of which heaven and earth are made.
— from The Story of My Life by Helen Keller - Let the resistance of this social framework weaken, and ideas which could have had no force before will germinate and develop.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - How can, patriotism germinate in the midst of so many other passions which smother it?
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Yet it took over two hundred years for the seeds of the crusades to germinate, before beginning even to sprout.
— from Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman - The seed sown the preceding evening was being given time to germinate and bring forth fruit.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant - Any profound study of a revolution necessitates a study of the mental soil upon which the ideas that direct its courses have to germinate.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park
