spry
/spɹaɪ/
spry adjective: having great power of leaping or running; nimble; active.
Adjective
spry (comparative sprier, superlative spriest)
- Having great power of leaping or running; nimble; active.
- What follows is a bunch of nonstop goofery involving chase sequences, dream sequences, fast-changing costumes and an improbable beard, a little musical help from Flight Of The Conchords, and ultimately a very physical confrontation with a surprisingly spry Victoria.2012 April 26, Tasha Robinson, “Film: Reviews: The Pirates! Band Of Misfits :”, in The Onion AV Club
- Vigorous; lively; cheerful; sprightly.
- "I'm not sure about whether I shall go. I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather—that is, when the fit is on me, for I can be spry enough at times."1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, page 37
- The Captain folded his brow into a look of intense perplexity. 'You seem exceedingly spry for a man who demolished an entire bottle of brandy and better part of an ounce of shag in a single evening.'
'And very nice too,' said the tramp. 'Now as to breakfast?'1992, Robert Rankin, The Antipope, page 68
Proper noun capitalized: Spry
Spry (plural Sprys)
- A surname.
spry meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada
spry in Urdu
- چست, پھرتیلا, تیز
spry in Bengali
- চটপটে, কর্মঠ, সজাগ
spry in Malayalam
- sprightly, lively, agile
- ഉത്സാഹമുള്ള, ഉല്ലാസഭരിതമായ, പ്രമുദിതമായ, സോൽത്സാഹമായ, അക്ഷീണ, ചുറചുറുക്കുള്ള
spry in Kannada
- ಚಟುವಟಿಕೆಯ, ಗೆಲುವಾದ, ಹುರುಪಿನ, ಉತ್ಸಾಹದಿಂದ ಕೂಡಿದ
Forms of spry
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | sprier |
| superlative | spriest |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Sprys |
Origin of spry
From British dialectal sprey, from Old Norse sprækr (“nimble, lively”) from Proto-Germanic *sprēkiz (“lively”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)preg- (“to strew, jerk, sprinkle, scatter”). Cognate with Icelandic sprækur (“lively, spry”), Norwegian sprek (“lively, healthy”), dialectal Swedish sprygg (“brisk, very active, skittish”). More at spark. Related to sprack, sprig, sprug, freckle.
Words formed from spry
Words that rhyme with spry
Questions about spry
- What does spry mean?
- Spry means having great power of leaping or running; nimble; active.
- What is spry in Urdu?
- Spry in Urdu is چست, پھرتیلا, تیز. See Spry meaning in Urdu.
- What part of speech is spry?
- Spry can be an adjective or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce spry?
- Spry is pronounced /spɹaɪ/.
Words near spry in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: spry (page history and authors); Spry (page history and authors); spry (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); spry (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); spry (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); spry (Kannada 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.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-spry.wav.
Cite this entry: “spry.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spry. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.