seedtime

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   the season or time for sowing seed

   The soldiers returned home before seedtime so that the fields would not lie unsown.

2. 2
   noun

   figurative: an early period in which something begins to develop

   The first workshops proved to be the seedtime of a much larger reform movement.

From Middle English seed time and Old English saedtima, a compound of seed + time. The figurative sense compares the beginning of an undertaking with the sowing that precedes a harvest.

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