Noun: sprig
| Singular | sprig |
| Plural | sprigs |
Sample Sentences
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a sprig of laurel or of parsley
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[…] from this bush in the dooryard, / With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, / A sprig with its flower I break. [1865, Walt Whitman, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”, in Sequel to Drum-Taps: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d and other poems:]
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“Why, one sprig of nut grass can ruin a whole yard.[…]" [1960 July 11, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa.; New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC:]
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a sprig whom I remember, with a whey-face and a satchel, not so many years ago [1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and Archibald Constable and Co., […], →OCLC:]
Nouns inflected like sprig
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English sprig, sprigge, of uncertain origin. Perhaps from Middle Low German sprik, spricke (“a dry, easily broken twig that has fallen from a tree; sprig”). Compare also dialectal English sprag (“sprig, twig”), English spray (“branch”), Old English spræc (“a shoot”), German Low German Spricke, Sprick (“dry branch, twig”). See: English Nouns '
sprag', English Nouns '
spray', Old English Nouns '
spræc'.