Word.ws English Dictionary

sprung

/spɹʌŋ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Midlands/spɹʊŋ/

sprung is the simple past and past participle of spring.

Adjective

sprung (comparative more sprung, superlative most sprung)

  1. Fitted or cushioned with springs.
    • Near-synonym: spring-loaded
    • a sprung mattress
    Synonyms:
    spring-loaded
  2. Worn out such that the springiness has dissipated.
    • My old money clip was sprung, so I replaced it.
  3. (slang, African-American Vernacular) Utterly infatuated with someone; completely taken over by romantic interest; originally and literally, having a penile erection.
    • I like big butts and I cannot lie. / You other brothers can’t deny / that when a girl walks in / with a itty bitty waist / and a round thing in your face you get sprung.1992, “Baby Got Back”, in Sir Mix-a-Lot (music), Mack Daddy
    • […] / ’Cause your love got the best of me, / And baby, you’re making a fool of me. / You got me sprung and I don’t care who sees, / ’Cause baby, you got me so crazy.2003, “Crazy In Love”, in Beyoncé et al. (music), Dangerously in Love
    Synonyms:
    smitten
  4. (Australia, slang) Caught doing something illegal or against the rules.
    • `Sprung!' cried Jeff Basin, the local dubbo.1979, Gabrielle Carey, Kathy Lette, Puberty Blues, page 46
    Synonyms:
    caught with a hand in the cookie jar, red-handed
  5. (dated, slang) drunk.
    Synonyms:
    drunk
  6. (obsolete) cracked or strained.
    Synonyms:
    crazed

Meaning of spring

Verb

spring (third-person singular simple present springs, present participle springing, simple past sprang or sprung, past participle sprung)

  1. (intransitive) To move or burst forth.
    • The boat sprang a leak and began to sink.
    1. (intransitive) To appear.
      • ...so the man tooke his concubine, and brought her foorth vnto them, and they knew her, and abused her all the night vntil the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her goe.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Judges 19:25
    2. (intransitive) To grow, to sprout.
      • Who hath diuided a water-course for the ouerflowing of waters? or a way for the lightning of thunder,
        To cause it to raine on the earth, where no man is: on the wildernesse wherein there is no man?
        To satisfie the desolate and waste ground, and to cause the bud of the tender herbe to spring forth.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Job 38:25–27
    3. (UK, dialectal, intransitive) To mature.
    4. (figuratively, intransitive) To arise, to come into existence.
    5. (figuratively, intransitive, sometimes) To enliven.
      • He hit the gas and the car sprang to life.

See all 64 meanings of spring

Synonyms of sprung

Antonyms

Forms of sprung

comparativemore sprung
superlativemost sprung

Words formed from sprung

Phrases with sprung

Words that rhyme with sprung

25 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sprung

What does sprung mean?
Sprung means fitted or cushioned with springs.
What is sprung the simple past and past participle of?
Sprung is the simple past and past participle of spring.
What part of speech is sprung?
Sprung is an adjective.
How do you pronounce sprung?
Sprung is pronounced /spɹʌŋ/.

Words near sprung in the dictionary

  1. Spruills
  2. spruing
  3. spruit
  4. spruits
  5. sprummer
  6. sprung
  7. sprung back
  8. sprung for
  9. sprung into action
  10. sprung out
  11. sprung rhyme

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sprung (page history and authors); spring (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)-Pvanp7-sprung.wav, en-au-sprung.ogg.

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