A seminal work is one so important that everything after it was shaped by it. A seminal paper, a seminal album, seminal research.
It is high praise and it is specific: seminal does not mean excellent, it means influential — the thing others grew out of. That is the test, and it is why calling a new work seminal is premature by definition. The word is formal and belongs to criticism and academic writing. Note that it shares a root with semen, which is why some writers avoid it, and that seminar comes from the same place — a seed-bed for ideas.
1adjectiveseminalSo influential that later work grew out of it.
“It is a seminal study and still argued about.”
synonyms: influential, groundbreaking, formative
seminal is a degree of influence.
Latin seminalis comes from semen, a seed — the same root as seminary, disseminate, which is to scatter seed, and season, which was the time for sowing. A seminal work is one others grew from, and the metaphor is exact.
Latin
sēminālis
Old French
seminal
Middle English
seminal
English, today
seminal
From Middle English seminal, from Old French seminal, from Latin sēminālis. From Middle English seminal, semynal, from Old French seminal, seminale, from Latin sēminālis, ultimately from oblique stem of Latin sēmen (“seed”) -al.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA