sprig
Americannoun
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sprigs
plural
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a small spray of some plant with its leaves, flowers, etc.
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an ornament having the form of such a spray.
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a shoot, twig, or small branch.
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Facetious. a scion, offspring, or heir of a family, class, etc.
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a youth or young fellow.
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a headless brad.
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Metallurgy.
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a small peg for reinforcing the walls of a mold.
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a metal insert, used to chill certain portions of cast metal, that becomes an integral part of the finished casting.
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verb (used with object)
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sprigs,
present (3rd person singular)
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sprigged,
past participle, past
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sprigging
present participle
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to mark or decorate (fabrics, pottery, etc.) with a design of sprigs.
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to fasten with brads.
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Horticulture. to propagate a plant, especially grass, by planting individual stolons.
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Metallurgy. to reinforce the walls of (a mold) with sprigs.
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to remove a sprig or sprigs from (a plant).
noun
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a shoot, twig, or sprout of a tree, shrub, etc; spray
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an ornamental device resembling a spray of leaves or flowers
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a small wire nail without a head
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informal a youth
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informal a person considered as the descendant of an established family, social class, etc
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another name for stud 1
verb
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to fasten or secure with sprigs
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to ornament (fabric, wallpaper, etc) with a design of sprigs
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to make sprays from (twigs and branches)
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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sprigsimple
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sprigssimple
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have spriggedperfect
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has spriggedperfect
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am spriggingprogressive
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are spriggingprogressive
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is spriggingprogressive
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have been spriggingperfect progressive
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has been spriggingperfect progressive
Past
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spriggedsimple
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had spriggedperfect
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was spriggingprogressive
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were spriggingprogressive
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had been spriggingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of sprig
First recorded in 1300–50; Middle English sprigge (noun); origin uncertain; sense “peg” perhaps of distinct origin; cf. sprag 1, spray 2
Explanation
Spruce up your iced tea with a sprig of mint from the yard. A sprig is a cutting, stem, or small branch. A sprig is prettier than a twig because it often has leaves or flowers. As the stem of a plant, a sprig usually includes leaves and berries or flowers, like a sprig of holly on your front door at Christmas, or a sprig of rosemary as a garnish on your plate at dinner. Botanists, or plant scientists, think of sprigs as cuttings from plants that can be planted in soil and grown, like a sprig from a crocus or strawberry plant. The process of planting sprigs even has a name—sprigging.
Vocabulary lists containing sprig
"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d" by Walt Whitman
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If You Come Softly
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Lyddie
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
While shooting the film at an airport off the east coast of Panama, Herzog, in costume, spotted a man on the other side of a high fence holding a sprig of flowers in his hand.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 30, 2025
However, Gail's "well, here's a cilantro sprig" when asked to identify the Mexican component of that dish got a chuckle out of me.
From Salon ● May 15, 2024
Four of the plants included in the analysis are already extinct, including the Guadalupe Island olive, which was sequenced using a dried sprig from 1875.
From New York Times ● May 11, 2024
During the annual Ivy Cutting ceremony at Seattle Pacific University on Friday, hundreds of undergraduates were given their own sprig of ivy that symbolizes their connection and release from the college.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 9, 2023
Mini shoved the sprig of youth into her backpack and grabbed Boo out of the air.
From "Aru Shah and the End of Time" by Roshani Chokshi
Already, there are sprigs of green growth in that yard.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 20, 2025
Rihab’s uncle placed two sprigs of artificial cherry blossom atop the grave, for the two girls, and later someone else laid a wreath for a stranger buried beside them.
From BBC ● Dec. 1, 2024
Meanwhile, in a bowl toss the carrots, celery, shallot, thyme, dill sprigs and 1 teaspoon salt.
From Washington Times ● Dec. 21, 2023
The first design was composed of jewel-toned swirls dotted with hand-drawn holly sprigs and coffee beans.
From Salon ● Dec. 3, 2023
I put a couple sprigs of parsley into the chicken to purty it up.
From "Girls Like Us" by Gail Giles
We are invited to follow this enterprising urchin, in a sprigged greeny-blue tunic, striped shorts and flip-flops, as she scoots blithely on her own through an unnamed, generic contemporary metropolis.
From New York Times ● Jan. 14, 2022
The putting surfaces were then sprigged with TifEagle Bermuda, the same strain of grass that had been on them for the past 10 years.
From Golf Digest ● Jan. 1, 2020
Drought-tolerant Zeon zoysia grass was sprigged everywhere but on the greens, which are Seashore paspalum, a hedge against the possibility that pure groundwater might someday become brackish from the nearby Atlantic.
From Golf Digest ● Jul. 13, 2016
Woven with more primitive looms, early “imitation” shawls were relatively sober: plain or sprigged at the center and patterned only along the borders.
From Slate ● Oct. 20, 2015
Aunt Docia’s dress was a sprigged print, dark blue, with sprigs of red flowers and green leaves thick upon it.
From "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder
“We’ve already done the back nine and tomorrow we’re sprigging the front nine,” said Oak Tree President and chief operating officer Tom Jones, who has been running golf courses for 40 years.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 19, 2022
On opening night, Edward Strauss played waltzes to the audience of "old dowagers, ancient bucks, fresh brides, dewy buds, young blades and sprigging braves."
From Time Magazine Archive
Classes in manual work of various kinds—woodwork, carpentry, applied drawing and building construction, lace and crochet making, needlework, dressmaking and embroidery, sprigging, hosiery and other such subjects, have been numerously and steadily attended.
From Ireland In The New Century by Plunkett, Horace Curzon, Sir
She was sprigging fine muslin for a cap, and she wore large rings on the finger of her left hand, as well as her wedding ring on the other.
From Bristol Bells A Story of the Eighteenth Century by Marshall, Emma
A crowd of minor enthusiasts fostered such industries as sprigging, and there was one man who believed that the future prosperity of Ireland might be secured by teaching people to make dolls.
From Hyacinth by Birmingham, George A.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
