# offspring

/ˈɔfsˌpɹɪŋ/ (US) · /ˈɒfspɹɪŋ/ (UK)

Source: https://englishreference.com/word/offspring
Updated: 2026-06-20

## Senses

### 1. children or young animals

noun · CEFR B2

the children of a person or the young of an animal.

For teachers: the immediate progeny of a human or animal parent. Often used as a collective singular or plural noun.

- The birds were busy finding worms to feed their hungry offspring.
- Biologists observed that the female bear was fiercely protective of her offspring during their first winter in the wild.

### 2. descendants

noun · CEFR C1 · Formal

the people who come from a specific family line over many years.

For teachers: the descendants of a person or family line, spanning multiple generations.

- The museum has a portrait of the duke and all his offspring.
- The legal document specified that the estate should be divided equally among the legitimate offspring of the deceased.

### 3. a result or product

noun · CEFR C2 · Literary

something that is created or produced as a result of an effort.

For teachers: a figurative result, product, or outcome of a particular process or creative effort.

- The new law was the offspring of many months of hard work.
- The revolutionary design was the offspring of a unique collaboration between architects and environmental scientists.

### 4. a child process

noun · CEFR C1 · Technical

a computer process that is started by another process.

For teachers: a process initiated or spawned by a parent process within an operating system.

- If the main program crashes, the offspring processes might keep running.
- The system administrator noticed that the server was struggling because too many offspring processes were consuming the available memory.

## Examples

- The birds are busy feeding their hungry offspring.
- The study tracked the health of the original participants and their offspring over several decades.
- In evolutionary biology, an organism's fitness is often measured by the number of viable offspring it produces that survive to reproductive age themselves.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.