Germinal
1
9.9
- noun
- Archaic
- This expansiveness of information is necessary for a public that knows little of the whale and whaling and has its source in the same instructive purpose as Zola on coal mining in Germinal.
Examples
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During Germinal, flowers start to bud, marking the transition from winter to spring.
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In the month of Germinal, the trees began to bloom, signaling the arrival of spring.
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Of these, Germinal is the most concerned with the daily life of the working poor.
Blog text (12) -
I joined in the so-called second germinal of the so-called glorious French Revolution.
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"We've read Zola's La Terre and Germinal, and if we are painting a peasant, we want to show that in the end what we have read has come very near to being a part of us."
Academic text (2007) -
While underground, Wolfe says, Zola discovered that the pit horses lived and died in situ; when he transfers this found detail to the pages of his novel "Germinal," the reader is moved and aghast.
Blog text (28) -
But these are the devices and strategies of poetry, as we have seen, rather than what we come to think of as novels, whose concerns—I mention only a few: Dickens' Hard Times, Zola's Germinal, Frank Norris' The Octopus—are more with the effects of technology on human lives and institutions.
Academic text (1997) -
In Germinal, many farmers prepare their fields for planting new crops after the winter thaw.
Compounds
- Specialized
A small group of cells on the surface of an egg that grows into a young animal
Surface Forms
Etymology
Germinal comes from the Latin root germen, meaning 'bud' or 'seed', and is the same idea you see in germinate ('to begin to grow'). So the French Revolutionary calendar called this spring month Germinal because it is the time when new plants and ideas start to bud.