spring
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "spring", 6-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "spring" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "spring" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
spring is aEnglishverb. It means: To move or burst forth. Pronounced /ˈspɹɪŋ/. It ranks #1,286 in English word frequency. Often confused with swing and sting.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | spring |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ˈspɹɪŋ/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #1,286 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for spring is 6 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈspɹɪŋ/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,286 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 38 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 10 documented wrong-spelling variants for spring, with forms such as "psring", "spirng", and "sppring". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "swing", "sting", "suing", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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, rac… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is spring, spelled S-P-R-I-N-G, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To move or burst forth.
- 2To move or burst forth.
- 3To move or burst forth.
- 4To move or burst forth.
- 5To move or burst forth.
- 6To move or burst forth.
- 7To move or burst forth.
- 8To move or burst forth.
- 9To move or burst forth.
- 10To cause to spring (all senses).
- 11To cause to spring (all senses).
- 12To leap over.
- 13To breed with, to impregnate.
- 14To wet, to moisten.
- 15To burst into pieces, to explode, to shatter.
- 16To go off.
- 17To crack.
- 18To come upon and flush out.
- 19To catch in an illegal act or compromising position.
- 20To begin.
- 21To put bad money into circulation.
- 22To tell, to share.
- 23To free from imprisonment, especially by facilitating an illegal escape.
- 24To be free of imprisonment, especially by illegal escape.
- 25To build, to form the initial curve of.
- 26To extend, to curve.
- 27To turn a vessel using a spring attached to its anchor cable.
- 28To pay or spend a certain sum, to yield.
- 29To raise an offered price.
- 30Alternative form of sprain.
- 31Alternative form of strain.
- 32To act as a spring: to strongly rebound.
- 33To equip with springs, especially (of vehicles) to equip with a suspension.
- 34to inspire, to motivate.
- 35To deform owing to excessive pressure, to become warped; to intentionally deform in order to position and then straighten in place.
- 36To swell with milk or pregnancy.
- 37To sound, to play.
- 38To find or get enough food during springtime.
Etymology
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 *sper- (“to jerk, twitch, snap, shove”). 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.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: psring,spirng,sppring,sprign,springg,sprinng,sprnig,sprring,srping,sspring
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for spring
Misspelling Variants of "spring"
Frequency rank: #1,286 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: