Fundamentally, you have to assume your reader is not a small child and understands that by choosing the word "seminal" you are not *actually* comparing something to cum.

Lots of fixation on formal definitions here, not a lot of focus on the emotive form and linguistic flow of words. "Hit", "strike", "slap", "bludgeon", and "smack" all mean the same thing but each carries their own valence and weight. You'd think an editor would understand this.