spor-

Spor- is a combining form used like a prefix meaning “spore.” Spore can have a variety of meanings, but in biology, it is used to refer to small organisms such as seeds or germ cells.

Spor- ultimately comes from the Greek ����ǰ�á, meaning “sowing” or “seed.” Sporadic, meaning “occasional,” comes from the related Greek ����ǰ����徱��ó��. Find out what sporadic has to do with seeds at our entry.

������ are variants of spor-?

Spor- is a variant of sporo-, which loses its –o- when combined with words or word elements beginning with vowels. When combined with words or word elements of Latin origin, spor- becomes spori-, as in sporiferous. When used at the end of a word, as a suffix, spor- becomes -spore, as in teliospore. A related adjectival form is -sporous, which means “having spores” or, literally, “full of spores.”

Want to know more? Read our Words That Use articles for spori-, sporo-, –spore and -sporous.

One example of a scientific term featuring spor- is sporont, “an encysted spore developed from a zygote.”

As we know, spior- means “spore,” but what about the -ont portion of the word? It means “being,” from Greek ��î�Բ���, “to be,” and sporont literally translates to “spore being.”

������ are some words that are related to the combining form spor-?

The following examples use the equivalent form of spor- in Latin.

• archesporium
• microsporangium
• sporangiophore
• sporangiospore
• sporangium

������ are some other forms that spor- may be commonly confused with?

• spermo-
• sphero-
• spiro-
• spleno-
• spongio-

Not all words that begin with the letters spor-, such as sporran and sport, are necessarily using spor- as a combining form to mean “spore.” Find out where these similarly spelled yet unrelated words come from at our entries for sporran and sport.

A sporangium is a part of a plant. The -angium portion of the word, which is a variant of the combining form angio-, comes from the Greek for “vessel” or “container.” With this in mind, what is a sporangium?