Definition of "seedbed" []

• A bed of soil cultivated for planting seeds. (noun)
• An area or source of growth or gradual manifestation: a seedbed of revolution. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Director Josie O'Rourke's day job is artistic director of London's Bush Theatre, which sees itself as a "seedbed," a bit like the Unity."
• "Witte offers the essential scholarly caveats—Calvinism was not the only source of ideas of political freedom; when Calvinists were in power they did not always extend the benefits of freedom to others—but fundamentally, he presents the claim that Reformed Protestantism was the "seedbed" of American constitutionalism: "American religious, ecclesiastical, associational, and political liberty were grounded in fundamental Puritan ideas of conscience, confession, community, and commonwealth.""
• "In his exhaustive examination of human history, Giovanni Battista Vico (1668-1744), Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Naples, concluded that marriage between a man and a woman is an essential characteristic of civilization, and as such is the 'seedbed' of society."