The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Spawn \Spawn\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Spawned; p. pr. & vb. n.
   Spawning.] [OE. spanen, OF. espandre, properly, to shed,
   spread, L. expandere to spread out. See Expand.]
   1. To produce or deposit (eggs), as fishes or frogs do.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. To bring forth; to generate; -- used in contempt.
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            One edition [of books] spawneth another. --Fuller.
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The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Spawn \Spawn\, v. i.
   1. To deposit eggs, as fish or frogs do.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. To issue, as offspring; -- used contemptuously.
      [1913 Webster]

The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Spawn \Spawn\, n. [[root]170. See Spawn, v. t.]
   1. The ova, or eggs, of fishes, oysters, and other aquatic
      animals.
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   2. Any product or offspring; -- used contemptuously.
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   3. (Hort.) The buds or branches produced from underground
      stems.
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   4. (Bot.) The white fibrous matter forming the matrix from
      which fungi.
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   Spawn eater (Zool.), a small American cyprinoid fish
      (Notropis Hudsonius) allied to the dace.
      [1913 Webster]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

spawn
    n 1: the mass of eggs deposited by fish or amphibians or
         molluscs
    v 1: call forth [syn: engender, breed, spawn]
    2: lay spawn; "The salmon swims upstream to spawn"

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (19 January 2023):

spawn

    To create a child process in a
   multitasking operating system.  E.g. Unix's fork
   system call or one of the spawn() library routines provided
   by most MS-DOS, Novell NetWare and OS/2 C compilers -
   spawnl(), spawnle(), etc.

   (1995-03-28)


The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):

spawn
 n.,vi.

    1. [techspeak] In Unix parlance, to create a child process from within a
    process. Technically this is a ‘fork’; the term ‘spawn’ is a bit more
    general and is used for threads (lightweight processes) as well as
    traditional heavyweight processes.

    2. In gaming, meant to indicate where (spawn-point) and when a player comes
    to life (or re-spawns) after being killed. Opposite of frag.