Etymology

sprit

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Today it means: A spar between mast and upper outer corner of a spritsail on sailing boats. Full definition →

Middle English sprete ← Old English sprēot ← Proto-Germanic *spreut
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sprit · noun1

  1. Proto-Germanic · inherited from*spreut
  2. Old English · inherited fromsprēot“pole, pike, spear”
  3. Middle English · inherited fromsprete
  4. English todaysprit

From Middle English sprete, from Old English sprēot (“pole, pike, spear”), from Proto-Germanic *spreut, related to Proto-West Germanic *sprutō (“shoot, sprout”). Cognate with West Frisian spriet (“sprit, spoke”), Dutch spriet (“a sprit, blade, spar, shoot, sprig”), Middle High German spriez (“sprout, twig”).

sprit · verb2

Variant of spurt, spirt (“to sprout, burst”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.