Word.ws English Dictionary

sprit

/spɹɪt/

sprit noun: a spar between mast and upper outer corner of a spritsail on sailing boats.

sprit: a spar between mast and upper outer corner of a spritsail on sailing boats
Image: Author: Kirby Schroeder. Self-generated and entirely my own, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

sprit (plural sprits)

  1. A spar between mast and upper outer corner of a spritsail on sailing boats.
    • ... and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits.1899, Joseph Conrad, chapter 1, in Heart of Darkness
  2. A shoot; a sprout.
    • the Maltſter will ſtir his Barley Couches till the Sprit begins to fork , five or ſix times a day or more ; it being always his Care to keep them from drying too much on the outſides1707, J[ohn] Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry; or, The Way of Managing and Improving of Land. […], London: […] J[ohn] H[umphreys] for H[enry] Mortlock […], and J[onathan] Robinson […], →OCLC

Verb

sprit (third-person singular simple present sprits, present participle spritting, simple past and past participle spritted)

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

sprit meaning in Tamil

sprit in Tamil

மரக்கலப் பாய்க் குறுக்குக் கோல்

Forms of sprit

Noun
pluralsprits
Verb
third-person singular presentsprits
present participlespritting
past participlespritted
pastspritted

Origin of sprit

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”).

Variant of spurt, spirt (“to sprout, burst”).

Words formed from sprit

Words that rhyme with sprit

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sprit

What does sprit mean?
Sprit means a spar between mast and upper outer corner of a spritsail on sailing boats.
What is sprit in Tamil?
Sprit in Tamil is மரக்கலப் பாய்க் குறுக்குக் கோல். See Sprit meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is sprit?
Sprit can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce sprit?
Sprit is pronounced /spɹɪt/.
What is the plural of sprit?
The plural of sprit is sprits.

Words near sprit in the dictionary

  1. sprinting
  2. sprintings
  3. sprints
  4. sprints classification
  5. sprints classifications
  6. sprit
  7. sprit-sail
  8. sprit-sails
  9. sprite
  10. sprite comic
  11. sprite halo

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sprit (page history and authors); sprit (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-sprit.wav.

Cite this entry: “sprit.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sprit. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.