1. The ova, spawn, or young of frogs.
1621. Burton, Anat. Mel., I. iii. II. ii. (1651), 200. He had … swallowed frogs-spawn.
1718. Quincy, Compl. Disp., 228. Frog’s Spawn.
1833. J. Rennie, Alph. Angling, 11. Even carp however likes animal food, and will devour small eels, frog-spawn, and the roe or the young of fishes, including its own species, as well as water insects.
1885. Syd. Soc. Lex., Frog’s spawn, the ova of the common frog…. Once used in medicine.
attrib. 1710. Steele, Tatler, No. 245, ¶ 2. A Collection of Receipts to make … Frog Spawn Water.
2. The popular name for certain freshwater algæ, which form green and slimy masses floating on the surface of ponds and ditches.
1864. Realm, 15 June, 546. Cities to which Genoa is a cobweb on a wall and Venice mere frog-spawn in a puddle.
1884. Public Opinion, 5 Sept., 299/1. Slime and frog-spawn are the chief products of these holes.
fig. 1895. J. Smith, Message of Exodus, xix. 297. God in whom his fathers trusted was different from the frog-spawn of superstition.
3. Sugar-manuf. A fungus destructive to saccharine solutions.
1887. trans. De Bary’s Fungi, 469. Leuconostoc mesenterioides, the ‘frog-spawn’ of sugar-factories.
