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spry

Pronunciation: /spɹaɪ/

The English word “spry” has 2 meanings listed here.

adjective

  1. Having great power of leaping or running; nimble; active.
  2. Vigorous; lively; cheerful; sprightly.

Etymology

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.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.