sprout
/spɹaʊt/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms sprouts sprouting sprouted
- noun A new growth of or on a plant, whether from seed or other parts.
- noun A germinated seed, an incipient young plant.
- noun An edible variety of such, grown and intended as food; examples include bean, alfalfa, kale, and others.
- noun A bean sprout.
- noun (figurative, informal) A child. “Oh my, how your sprouts have grown!”
- noun A Brussels sprout. “In our family we only eat sprouts once a year, at Christmas.”
- verb (horticulture, intransitive) To grow from seed; to germinate. “The crocuses should be sprouting after 2 months, provided they're well tended.”
- verb (transitive) To cause to grow from a seed. “I sprouted beans and radishes and put them in my salad.”
- verb (transitive) To deprive of sprouts. “to sprout potatoes”
- verb (intransitive) To emerge from the ground as sprouts.
- verb (figurative, intransitive) To emerge haphazardly from a surface. “Whiskers sprouted from the old man's chin.”
- verb (figurative, intransitive) To emerge or appear haphazardly. “A lot of coffee shops have sprouted up in this neighbourhood since the block of flats was put up.”
- proper noun A surname.
Synonyms
seedling chit stock ackerspyre shoot spud germinate pullulate bourgeon burgeon forth
Etymology
From Middle English sproute, either from Middle English sprouten (“to sprout”) (see below); or from Middle Dutch sprute or Middle Low German sprûte (“sprout”), all related to Proto-West Germanic *spreutan. Doublet of spruit.
From Middle English sprouten, spruten, from Old English sprūtan, from Proto-West Germanic *spreutan, from Proto-Germanic *spreutaną.
* As a Dutch surname, from spruit (“sprout, shoot”)
* As an English and Scottish surname, spelling variant of Sprott
Webster’s 1913
- verb To shoot, as the seed of a plant; to germinate; to push out new shoots; hence, to grow like shoots of plants.
- verb To shoot into ramifications. [Obs.] Bacon.
- verb To cause to sprout; as, the rain will sprout the seed.
- verb To deprive of sprouts; as, to sprout potatoes.
Etymology [OE. sprouten, spruten; akin to OFries. spr, AS. spreótan, D. spruiten, G. spriessen, Sw. spruta to squirt, to spout. Cf. Sprit, v. t. & i., Sprit a spar, Spout, v. t., Spurt.]
Etymology [Cf. AS. sprote a sprout, sprig; akin to Icel. sproti, G. sprosse. See Sprout, v. i.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “sprout”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details