Spring – a single origin, many different meanings, and some irregularities to provoke the odd peeve.
They all come from the same verb spring, which was springan or áspringan in Old English, and goes right back to similar words in many of the old Germanic languages. It means to move suddenly, bound or leap, to be resilient or elastic. It has also acquired some interesting slang meanings of escaping or being released from jail, and even to pay for a treat.
The OED gives two alternative forms for the past tense: sprang or sprung. However its past participle is sprung. So the following are well and widely used:
they sprang him from jail
they sprung him from jail
he had been sprung from jail.
This sense of sudden release transfers then to water springing forth in a spring, which is a place of rising of water from the ground, the…
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