sprang


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sprang

 (sprăng)
v.
A past tense of spring.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

sprang

(spræŋ)
vb
the past tense of spring
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

spring

(sprɪŋ)

v. sprang or, often, sprung; sprung; spring•ing; v.i.
1. to rise, leap, or move suddenly and swiftly: a tiger about to spring.
2. to be released suddenly from a constrained position: The door sprang open.
3. to issue forth suddenly or forcefully: Oil sprang from the well.
4. to come into being; arise: Industries sprang up in the suburbs.
5. to have as one's birth or lineage: to spring from seafaring folk.
6. to extend upward.
7. to take an upward course or curve from a point of support, as an arch.
8. to occur suddenly: An objection sprang to mind.
9. to become bent or warped.
v.t.
10. to cause to spring.
11. to cause the sudden operation of: to spring a trap.
12. to cause to work loose, warp, or split: Moisture sprang the board from the fence.
13. to undergo the development of: sprang a leak.
14. to bend by force.
15. to produce by surprise: to spring a joke.
16. to leap over.
17. Slang. to secure the release of from confinement.
18. spring for, Informal. to pay for; treat someone to.
n.
19. an act of springing; a sudden leap or bound.
20. an elastic quality: a spring in his walk.
21. a structural defect caused by a warp or crack.
22. an issue of water from the ground.
23. the place of such an issue: mineral springs.
24. a source; fountainhead: a spring of inspiration.
25. an elastic contrivance or body, as a strip or wire of steel coiled spirally, that recovers its shape after being compressed, bent, or stretched.
26. the season between winter and summer, marked by the budding and growth of plants and the onset of warmer weather: in the Northern Hemisphere from the March equinox to the June solstice; in the Southern Hemisphere from the September equinox to the December solstice.
27. the first stage and freshest period: the spring of life.
28. Also called springing.
a. the point at which an arch or dome rises from its support.
b. the rise or the angle of the rise of an arch.
[before 900; Old English springan, c. Old Frisian springa, Old Saxon, Old High German springan, Old Norse springa; (n.) Old English spring issue of a stream, c. Middle Low German, Old High German spring]
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
References in classic literature ?
The child half asleep on a cot sprang up and shrieked aloud with terror.
The pack had been loath to forego the kill it had hunted down, and it lingered for several minutes, making sure of the sounds, and then it, too, sprang away on the trail made by the she- wolf.
It was as if the devil was in him, for he sprang here and sprang there, now thrusting and now cutting, catching blows on his shield, turning them with his blade, stooping under the swing of an axe, springing over the sweep of a sword, so swift and so erratic that the man who braced himself for a blow at him might find him six paces off ere he could bring it down.