sprit

Pronunciation: /spɹɪt/

The English word “sprit” has 4 meanings listed here.

noun

A spar between mast and upper outer corner of a spritsail on sailing boats.
A shoot; a sprout.

verb

To sprout; to bud; to germinate, as barley steeped for malt.
To throw out with force from a narrow orifice; to eject; to spurt out.

Etymology

From Middle English sprete, from Old English sprēot (“pole, pike, spear”), from Proto-Germanic *spreut, related to Proto-West Germanic *sprutō (“shoot, sprout”). Cognate with West Frisian spriet (“sprit, spoke”), Dutch spriet (“a sprit, blade, spar, shoot, sprig”), Middle High German spriez (“sprout, twig”).

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.