spring

An act of springing: a leap, a jump.

Noun

  1. An act of springing: a leap, a jump.
    • The pris'ner with a spring from prison broke; Then stretch'd his feather'd fans with all his might, And to the neighb'ring maple wing'd his flight. - 1700, John Dryden, The Cock and the Fox:
  2. The season of the year in temperate regions in which temperatures and daylight hours rise, and plants spring from the ground and into bloom and dormant animals spring to life.
    • Spring is the time of the year most species reproduce.
    • You can visit me in the spring, when the weather is bearable.
    • No joy the blowing season gives, ⁠The herald melodies of spring, ⁠But in the songs I love to sing A doubtful gleam of solace lives. - 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XXXVIII”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon,...

    Synonyms: springtime

    Coordinate Terms: summer autumn or fall winter

    1. (astronomy) The period from the moment of vernal equinox (around March 21 in the Northern Hemisphere) to the moment of the summer solstice (around June 21); the equivalent periods reckoned in other cultures and calendars.

      • Chinese New Year always occurs in January or February but is called the "Spring Festival" throughout East Asia because it is reckoned as the beginning of their spring.

      Synonyms: springtime

      Coordinate Terms: summer autumn or fall winter

    2. (meteorology) The three months of March, April, and May in the Northern Hemisphere and September, October, and November in the Southern Hemisphere.

      • I spent my spring holidays in Morocco.
      • The spring issue will be out next week.

      Synonyms: springtime

      Coordinate Terms: summer autumn or fall winter

  3. The time of something's growth; the early stages of some process.
    • ...and it came to passe about the spring of the day, that Samuel called Saul to the top of the house... - 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 1 Samuel 9:26:
    • O how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day. - c. 1590–1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies...

    1. (figurative, politics) a period of political liberalization and democratization

      • Arab Spring
      • Prague Spring
  4. Someone with ivory or peach skin tone and eyes and hair that are not extremely dark, seen as best suited to certain colors of clothing.
  5. Something which springs, springs forth, springs up, or springs back, particularly
    • This beer was brewed with pure spring water.

    Synonyms: fount source

    1. (geology) A spray or body of water springing from the ground.

    2. (oceanography, obsolete) The rising of the sea at high tide.

    3. (oceanography) Ellipsis of spring tide, the especially high tide shortly after full and new moons.

      Antonyms: neap tide

    4. An elastic mechanical part or device in any shape (e.g., flat, curved, coiled), made of flexible material (usually spring steel) that exerts force and attempts to spring back when bent, compressed, or stretched.

      • We jumped so hard the bed springs broke.

    5. (nautical) A line from a vessel's end or side to its anchor cable used to diminish or control its movement.

      • He had warped round with the springs on his cable, and had recommenced his fire upon the Aurora. - 1836, Frederick Marryat, Mr. Midshipman Easy, volume III, page 72:

    6. (nautical) A line laid out from a vessel's end to the opposite end of an adjacent vessel or mooring to diminish or control its movement.

      • You should put a couple of springs onto the jetty to stop the boat moving so much.
      • Spring is likewise a rope reaching diagonally from the stern of a ship to the head of another which lies along-side or a-breast of her. - 1769, William Falconer, An Universal Dictionary of the Marine, s.v:
      • ‘Springs’ are the ropes used on a ship that is alongside a berth to prevent fore and aft movements. - 2007 January 26, Business Times::

    7. (figurative) A race, a lineage.

    8. (figurative) A youth.

    9. A shoot, a young tree.

    10. A grove of trees; a forest.

  6. An erection of the penis.
  7. A crack which has sprung up in a mast, spar, or (rare) a plank or seam.
    • A spar is said to be sprung, when it is cracked or split,... and the crack is called a spring. - 1846, Arthur Young, Nautical Dictionary, page 292:
  8. Springiness: an attribute or quality of springing, springing up, or springing back, particularly
    • the spring of a bow

    Synonyms: bounce bounciness elasticity resilience springiness

    1. Elasticity: the property of a body springing back to its original form after compression, stretching, etc.

    2. Elastic energy, power, or force.

      • Heav'ns what a spring was in his Arm, to throw: How high he held his Shield, and rose at ev'ry blow! - 1697, John Dryden, Virgil's Aeneis, Bk. xi, ll. 437–8
      • Mrs Durbeyfield, excited by her song, trod the rocker with all the spring that was left in her after a long day's seething in the suds. - 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, volume 1, London: James R. Osgood,...
  9. The source from which an action or supply of something springs.
    • As wel the singers as the players on instruments shall bee there: all my springs are in thee. - 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalms 87:7:
    • Such a man can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth him, he can patiently suffer all things with cheerfull submission and resignation to the Divine Will. He has a secret Spring of spiritual Joy, and the...
    • […] discover, at least in some degree, the secret springs and principles, by which the human mind is actuated in its operations? - 1748, David Hume, Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the...

    Synonyms: impetus impulse

  10. Something which causes others or another to spring forth or spring into action, particularly
    • Our Author ſhuns by vulgar Springs to move / The Hero's Glory, or the Virgin's Love; […] - 1712 (date written), [Alexander] Pope, “Prologue, by Mr. Pope. Spoken by Mr. [Robert] Wilks.”, in [Joseph] Addison, Cato, a...

    1. A cause, a motive, etc.

    2. (obsolete, music) A lively piece of music.

      • The firstand spring the fiddle did play Hey wi the gay and the grinding Said, "Ye'll drown my sister, as she's dune me." At the bony bony bows of London - (Can we date this quote?), stanza 18, in The Bonny Bows o London...

Origin

From Middle English spryng (“a wellspring, tide, branch, sunrise, kind of dance or blow, ulcer, snare, flock”); partly from Old English spring (“wellspring, ulcer”), from Proto-West Germanic *spring, from Proto-Germanic *springaz (“a wellspring, fount”); and partly from Old English spryng (“a jump”), from Proto-West Germanic *sprungi, from Proto-Germanic *sprungiz (“a jump”). Further senses derived from the verb and from clippings of day-spring, springtime, spring tide, etc. Its sense as the season, first attested in a work predating 1325, gradually replaced Middle English lenten, lente, from Old English lencten (“spring, Lent”) as that word became more specifically liturgical. Compare fall.

Forms

springs

Synonyms

beginning

Related

aspring atspring bespring espringal rumspringa springal springald springboc springbock springbok springe spring-haas springhaas springhalt springle

Derived

advance spring after-spring afterspring Ainsworth Hot Springs air spring air-spring Alice Springs Altamonte Springs Anderson Springs anti-rattle spring arc spring Arlington Springs Man Arlington Springs Woman artesian spring Aspen Springs Athol Springs Augusta Springs austral spring autumn-spring auxiliary spring balance spring Banff Springs physa Barton Springs salamander Bay Springs

Verb Entry 3

  1. To move or burst forth.
    • The boat sprang a leak and began to sink.
    • ...þe wound þat was springand with huge stremes of blude... - c. 1540, Livy, translated by John Bellenden, History of Rome, Vol. I, i, xxii, p. 125:

    1. To appear.

      • ...so the man tooke his concubine, and brought her foorth vnto them, and they knew her, and abused her all the night vntil the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her goe. - 1611, The Holy Bible, […]...
      • Home I would go, But that my Dores are hatefull to my eyes. Fill'd and damm'd up with gaping Creditors, Watchfull as Fowlers when their Game will ſpring; […] - 1682, Thomas Otway, Venice Preserv’d, or, A Plot...

    2. To grow, to sprout.

      • Who hath diuided a water-course for the ouerflowing of waters? or a way for the lightning of thunder, To cause it to raine on the earth, where no man is: on the wildernesse wherein there is no man? To satisfie the...
      • Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade No solitary virtue dares to spring, […] - 1813, Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Canto V”, in Queen Mab; […], London: […] P. B. Shelley, […], →OCLC, page 61:
      • Dr. Sigmund Freud... says that everything you and I do springs from two motives: the sex urge and the desire to be great. - 1936, Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, page 42:

    3. To grow, to sprout.

      (UK dialectal) To mature.

    4. (figurative) To arise, to come into existence.

      Synonyms: arise form take shape

    5. (sometimes figurative) To enliven.

      • He hit the gas and the car sprang to life.

    6. (figurative, usually with cardinal adverbs) To move with great speed and energy.

      • Deer spring with their hind legs, using their front hooves to steady themselves.
      • ...into helle spring... - c. 1250, Life of St Margaret, Trin. Col. MS B.14.39 (323), f. 22v
      • Ye kynge... sprange out of his chare and resseyuyd them worshipfully. - 1474, William Caxton, transl., Game and Playe of the Chesse, iii, vii, 141:

      Synonyms: bound jump leap

    7. (usually with from) To be born, descend, or originate from

      • He sprang from peasant stock.
      • From this basis, a first-order difference equation for the evolution of capital per worker is found, and the time path of the economy springs from this equation. - 2008, George McCandless, The ABCs of RBCs, Harvard...

    8. (obsolete) To rise in social position or military rank, to be promoted.

  2. To cause to spring (all senses).

    1. (of mechanisms) To cause to work or open by sudden application of pressure.

      • He sprang the trap.
      • They sprung another Mine... wherein was placed about sixtie Barrels of Powder. - 1625, Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes, Vol. II, x, ix:
      • On the 23d, the Besiegers sprung a Mine under the Salient Angle, upon the Right of the Haif Moon, which had the desired Success, the Enemy's Gallery on that Side, and the Mason-Work of the Counterscarp, being thereby...
  3. To leap over.
    • I sprang the fence, and was soon in the village street. - 1876, Matilda Leathes, Our village worthies; or, Stories of village life, page 112:
  4. To breed with, to impregnate.
    • ...[they] sought the fairest stoned horses to spring their mares... - 1585, Nicolas De Nicolay, translated by Thomas Washington, The Navigations, Peregrinations, and Voyages, Made into Turkie..., Bk. IV, p. 154:
  5. To wet, to moisten.
  6. To burst into pieces, to explode, to shatter.
    • On the 22nd the mines sprang, and took very good effect. - 1698, François Froger, A Relation of a Voyage Made... on the Coasts of Africa, page 30:
  7. To go off.
    • The whole contraption appears liable to spring apart at any moment. - 2012 April 21, Sydney Morning Herald, page 5:
  8. To crack.
    • The Edward sprang hir foremast. - 1582 August 2, Richard Madox, diary
  9. To come upon and flush out.
    • For generations of men the springer spaniel has been looked upon as the dog for springing pheasants in covert and finding and retrieving dead birds or winged runners when ordered to do so. The properly broken dog will...
    • […] by the beginning of this century a still smaller breed, with a weight of 4 of 5 pounds and a chest measurement of around 12 inches, had come into being for springing rabbits. Such, then, is a rough, quick ancestral...
    • I winter, ruffed grouse sometimes roost at night on the ground under the insulating snow. Even during the midday hours, I have often flushed grouse out from under the snow-bowed branches of "buck-brush," the type of...
  10. To catch in an illegal act or compromising position.
    • He figured that nobody would ever spring him, but he figured wrong. - 1980, John Hepworth et al., Boozing Out in Melbourne Pubs..., page 42:
  11. To begin.
  12. To put bad money into circulation.

Origin

From Middle English springen, from Old English springan (“to spring, leap, bounce, sprout forth, emerge, spread out”), from Proto-West Germanic *springan, from Proto-Germanic *springaną (“to burst forth”), from Proto-Indo-European *spre(n)ǵʰ- (“to move, race, spring”), from *sperǵʰ- (“to hurry”). Cognates * Saterland Frisian springe * West Frisian springe * Dutch springen * German Low German springen * German springen * Danish springe * Swedish springa * Norwegian springe * Faroese springa * Icelandic springa (“to burst, explode”). Other possible cognates include Lithuanian spreñgti (“to push (in)”), Old Church Slavonic прѧсти (pręsti, “to spin, to stretch”), Latin spargere (“to sprinkle, to scatter”), Ancient Greek σπέρχω (spérkhō, “to hasten”), Sanskrit स्पृहयति (spṛháyati, “to be eager”). Some newer senses derived from the noun.

Forms

springs springing sprang sprung no-table-tags glossary spring -

Related

sprang springwort sprung to-spring unspring

Derived

hope springs eternal outspring overspring respring spring a butt spring a leak spring an arch spring at springel springer spring for spring forth spring-hare spring has sprung spring in springing spring into action spring-jack spring-lobster spring loose spring on spring out spring the luff spring to life

Verb Entry 4

  1. To spend the springtime somewhere.
    • True it is that, owing to the migratory propensities of our countrymen, every third man has wintered at Naples, springed at Vienna, summered in Switzerland, and autumned on the banks of the Lago Maggiore; - 1835 May,...
    • If Tad’s father and Tad had wintered, springed, summered, and autumned together for an hundred years instead of fifteen they could[…] - 1912, William C[yrus] Sprague, Tad, the Story of a Boy who Had No Chance, page 2:
    • They wintered in a warm place And summered in a cold, But where they springed and autumned I never have been told. - 1937, Mortimer Jones, “Lines of No Importance”, in The Alphi Phi Quarterly, page 29:

Forms

springs springing springed

Related

geyser Hooke's law seep Slinky vernal well