sprightless ( gh silent)

[English spright; -le .] Destitute of spirit or vivacity; dull, dispirited. "Are you grown Benumbed with fear, or virtue's sprightle cold?" Cowley. spright-li-ne ( gh silent), s. [Eng.sprightly: -ne .] The quality or state of being sprightly; liveline , vivacity, gayety, briskne . "Youth has a sprightline and fire to boast, That in the valley of decline are lost." Cowper: Conversation , 635. spright-lý (gh silent), a. [ Eng.spright ; -ly.] *1. Having the qualities or appearance of a spright or spirit. "With other sprightly shows of mine own kindred." Shakesp.: Cymbeline, v. 5. 2. Lively, spirited, gay, brisk, nimble, animated, vivacious. "The lyre rejoins the sprightly lay." Pope: Homer's Ody ey, i. 530. Used by Shakespeare adverbially. "Addre yourself to entertain them sprightly." Shakesp.: Winter's Tale , iv. 4. spring, *sprynge (past tense sprang , * sprong , spronge, sprung , pa . par. * spronge , sprongen, sprung, #sprungen), v. i. & t. [A. S. spring an , sprincan (pa. t. sprang , spranc , pa. par. sprungen ), cogn. with Dut. springen (pa. t. sprong , pa. par. gesprongen); Icel. spring a =to burst, to split; Sw. spring a; Dan.springe ; Ger.springen ; Sw.spränga =to cause to burst.] A. Intransitive : 1. To rise or come forth as out of the ground; to shoot up, out, or forth; to begin to appear; to come to light or existence; to i ue into sight or knowledge. (Usually applied to any manner of growing, rising, or appearing, as of a stream from its source, a plant from seed.) "But othire seed is felden in to stony placis and anoon the i sprungen up." -Wycliffe: Matthew xiii. 2. To i ue, to proceed; to take or have origin or beginning, as from parents, ancestors, country, or the like. "What stock he springs of." Shakesp.: Coriolanus , ii. 3. 3. To result, as from a cause, motive, reason, principle, or the like; to originate. "Whence springs this deep despair?" Shakesp.: Henry VI ., Pt . III . , iii. 3. 4. To leap, to bound, to jump. "Away he springs ." --Shakesp .: Venus and Adonis , 258, 5. To start up or rise suddenly, as from a covert, . "A covey of partridges springing in our front, put our Infantry in disorder."- Add is on . 6. To fly back, to start, as a bow when bent springs back by its elasticity. 7. To shoot; to i ue suddenly and with violence. "Then shook the sacred shrine, and sudden light Sprung thro' the vaulted roof, and made the temple bright." Dryden: Palamon and Aroite , iii. 266. *8. To thrive, to grow. "What makes all this but Jupiter the king, At whose command we perish and we spring ?" 3810 3. To cause to open; as, to spring a leak. 11. A plant, a young tree; also a grove of trees; a 4. To crack; to bend or strain, so as to crack or small shrubbery. split. "The Genesta has broken her bowsprit off short if she has not also sprung her topmast."- London Daily Telegraph. 5. To cause to close suddenly, or come together violently, as the parts of an instrument which are acted upon by a spring; as, to spring a trap. 6. To bend by force, as something stiff or strong; to insert, as a beam in a place too short for it, by bending it so as to bring the ends nearer together, and allowing it to straighten when in place. (Usually with in ; as, to spring in a slat or bar.) (Good rich.) *7. To leap over; to jump; to pa by leaping. "To spring the fence, to rein the prancing steed." Thomson. Naut.: To loosen the end of a plank in a ship's bottom. (2) To spring at : To leap toward; to attempt to seize with a spring. (3) To spring forth : To leap out; to rush out. (4) To spring in : To rush in; to enter with a leap or in haste. (5) To spring on (or upon ): (a) Lit .: To leap on or upon; to rush on hastily and violently. (b) Fig .: To produce quickly or unexpectedly. "Such a man is not likely to spring upon his a ociates and allies a scheme of English surrender to Irish demands."-London Daily Telegraph. IMG:content-0101.png:[blocks in formation] "A very hunter did I rush Upon the prey: with leaps and springs ." Words worth: To a Butterfly. 2. A flying back; the resistance of a body recovering its former state by its elastic power; as, the spring of a bow. 3. Elastic power or force; elasticity. "In adult persons, when the fibers cannot any more yield, they must break, or lose their spring ."-Arbuthnot, 4. An clastic substance of any kind, having the power of recovering, by its elasticity, its natural state, after being bent or otherwise forced, interposed between two objects, in order to impart or check motion or permit them to yield relatively to each other. Springs are made of various materials, as india-rubber, strips of wire or steel coiled spi rally, steel rods or plates, ., and are used for many purposes; for diminishing concu ion in carriages, for motive power, acting through the tendency of a metallic coil to unwind itself, as in clocks and watches; to measure weight and other forces as in the spring-balance, . Springs of coiled wire are much used for balances, for chair and sofa cushions and backs, mattre es, and in various other domestic applications where no great amount of strength is required. "The spring must be made of good steel, well tempered; and the wider the two ends of the spring stand asunder, the milder it throws the chape of the vise open." -Моxоn : Mechanical Exercises. 5. Any active power; that by which action or motion is produced or propagated. "Nature is the same, and man is the same, has the same affections and pa ions, and the same springs that give them motion."-Rymer. 6. In the same sense as II. 2. Often used adjectively, as spring water. 7. Any source of supply; source, origin; that from which anything springs or is derived; a source of supply. "Philosophy and science, and the springs Of wonder, and the wisdom of the world." Byron: Manfred, i. 1. I. Ordinary Language : 1. To cause to start or rise suddenly; to start or rouse, as game. "The too much praise Could not but spring up blushes in my cheeks." Mas singer: Parl, of Love, v. 1. 2. To cause to explode or burst; to discharge. "Our miners discovered several of the enemies' mines, who have sprung divers others which did little execution." Tatler . 8. One of the four seasons of the year; that season in which plants begin to spring and vegetate; the In the northern hemisphere the spring season begins about March 21, when the sun enters the sign of Aries, and ends about June 22, at the time of the summer solstice. Popularly, how ever, spring is considered to begin in February or March, and end in April or May. " Spring is here with leaf and gra ." Tennyson: The Window, 128. IMG:content-0102.png:[blocks in formation] *(1) A leak; the starting of a plank; an opening in a seam. "Where her springs are, her leaks and how to stop 'em." Ben Jonson: Cat i line, iii. 1. (2) A crack in a mast or yard, running obliquely or transversely. (3) A rope or hawser pa ed from the stern of a ship and made fast to the cable on the anchor from the bow, by which she is riding. The object is to bring the broadside to bear in any direction. (4) A check on a cable while unshackling it. (5) A rope extending diagonally from the stern of one ship to the head of another, to make one ship sheer off to a greater distance. 2. Phys . Geog. & Geol .: An overflow of water or other liquid. When rain falls on a porous soil it is rapidly absorbed, the surface of the soil being soon again dry. Meanwhile, the water has percolated downward till it has, at a greater or le depth, been intercepted by an impervious stratum, where it gradually forms a reservoir. It then pre es with great force laterally, and a system of subterranean drainage is established. If the impervious stratum be some distance up a hillside, the water finds its way out, not, however, all along the stratum, for the existence of rents, fi ures, and inequalities confines it to a few spots. If the reservoir be on an elevation and a boring be made on a lower level to any of the branches leading from it, the water will rise in the bore to the surface and shoot up into the air to a height proportional to the pre ure from the reservoir, as an Artesian well (q. v.), which is akin to a spring. Springs are of two kinds, land and perennial springs, the former existing where there is a soil with an impervious subsoil, the latter deriving their waters from deeper sources. Perennial springs include thermal springs and geysers. [INTERMITTENT-SPRING.] Sometimes springs contain much earthy material; thus there are calcareous, sulphureous and gypseous, siliceous, ferruginous, saline, carbonated and petroleum springs. They are then called mineral springs. (1) Spring of pork : The lower part of the forequarter, which is divided from the neck and has the leg and foot without the shoulder. ( Beaum . & Flet.: Prophete .) *(2) Spring of the day : The dawn, dawning. "About the spring of the day, Samuel called Saul to the top of the house."-1 Samuel , ix. 26.