spring

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The season between winter and summer, when plants start to grow.

   Flowers begin to bloom in spring.

2. 2
   noun

   A coiled piece of metal that goes back to its shape after being pushed or pulled.

   The spring in the old mattress was broken.

3. 3
   verb

   To jump or move suddenly and quickly.

   The cat sprang onto the table.

4. 4
   noun

   A place where water flows naturally up out of the ground.

   We drank fresh water from a mountain spring.

Multiword verbs with spring

• spring up Phrasal verb A1

  to appear or develop suddenly

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Spring is an Old English word that originally denoted the source of a well or stream, where water rises from the ground. It later referred to the beginning of something, and “the spring of the year” was shortened in the mid-16th century to the modern name of the season. The metal-coil sense, recorded in late Middle English, developed from the related verb meaning “come out or jump up suddenly.”

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 lente, lentin, from…

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External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary