Other forms: springs, sprang, sprung, springing
Spring is the season after winter, when the days get longer and everything green starts again. Daffodils on the roundabout, lambs in a wet field, the clocks going forward, the first evening you walk home from work without a coat.
The same word does three other jobs. A spring is the coil of metal that pushes back when you press it — in a pen, in a mattress, in the trap under the shed. A spring is also water rising by itself out of the ground, which is what the bottle means by spring water. And as a verb, to spring is to move fast and all at once: a cat springs onto the table, a trap springs shut, a name springs to mind. The verb is irregular — it sprang yesterday, it has sprung since. Say in spring or in the spring, never on spring, and note the two set phrases you will meet first: spring a surprise on somebody, and spring-clean the house in March.
1nounspringThe season between winter and summer.~58%
“The garden looks its best in spring.”
2verbleapTo jump or move suddenly and quickly.~2%
“The cat springs onto the table the moment your back is turned.”
3nouncoilA coil of metal that pushes back when you squeeze it.~24%
“One of the springs in the old sofa has given way.”
synonyms: coil
4nounrockWater that flows up naturally out of the ground.~16%
“The village grew up around a spring.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 140 sentences found in the wild and placed 96 of them on a sense (44 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Old English springan meant to leap, to bounce, to sprout, to burst out — one word for anything that comes up fast and by itself. That is why a coil of metal, water rising out of a hillside and the season when the whole country turns green all answer to the same name. The season had a different name first: English called it lenten, and as that word narrowed to the church's Lent, spring took the job.
Proto-Indo-European
*spre(n)ǵʰ- — to move, race, spring
Proto-Germanic
*springaną — to burst forth
Proto-West Germanic
*springan
Old English
springan — to spring, leap, bounce, sprout forth, emerge, spread out
Middle English
springen
English, today
spring
Built from
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”). 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA