oviduct

noun

ovi·duct ˈō-və-ˌdəkt

: a tube that allows for the passage of eggs from an ovary

oviductal

ˌō-və-ˈdək-tᵊl

adjective

Examples of oviduct in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Even before birth, some species of caecilians use their specialized teeth to feed on the lining of the mother’s oviduct. —

Margaret Osborne, Smithsonian Magazine, 24 Oct. 2023 But one female failed to ovulate, another had complications with her egg, and sperm for the third had lost much of its motility—its ability to travel into the oviduct and fertilize an egg—during shipment to the zoo, all of which made pregnancy less likely. —

Amy Mathews Amos, Scientific American, 4 Sep. 2023 There are also some lizard species that develop a placental link with their young, though the African skink Trachylepis ivensi is the only reptile species whose embryos can actually burrow into the wall of the oviduct, approaching the degree of implantation seen in mammal pregnancy. —

Jake Buehler, National Geographic, 8 June 2020 During mating, consorts will try to court a female by flashing vibrant colors across their bodies; if successful, a consort will place a packet of sperm, called a spermatophore, into the female’s oviduct, a tube that leads to her ovaries. —

Joseph Castro, Discover Magazine, 10 Aug. 2011 Larger males mate with a female in the traditional way (for a squid), depositing packets of their sperm inside her oviduct. —

Elizabeth Preston, Discover Magazine, 12 Aug. 2011 When that process is working correctly, one yolk at a time is released into her oviduct. —

John Kelly, Washington Post, 17 Dec. 2022 To that end his team from North Carolina A&T and Cornell University began studying how bull sperm—a decent stand-in for our own among the mammals—moved in a gooey environment akin to conditions in the bovine cervix, uterus and oviduct. —

Brian Handwerk, Smithsonian Magazine, 22 Sep. 2022 The researchers tried again, inserting the family’s genetic variant into the DNA of a mouse egg, injecting that into the coils of a mother’s oviduct. —

Eric Boodman, STAT, 18 Feb. 2022 See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'oviduct.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.