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.

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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