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A small shoot or twig of a tree or other plant; a spray; as, a sprig of laurel or of parsley.

To issue with speed and violence; to move with activity; to dart; to shoot. And sudden light Sprung through the vaulted roof. Dryden.

Growth; increase; also, that which springs up; a shoot; a plant. Thou blessest the springing thereof. Ps. lxv. 10. Springing line of an arch (Arch.), the horizontal line drawn through the junction of the vertical face of the impost with the curve of the intrados; -- called also spring of an arch.

A shoot; a sprout. [Obs.] Mortimer.

To shoot, as the seed of a plant; to germinate; to push out new shoots; hence, to grow like shoots of plants.

largely used in tanning leather. -- Spruce beer. Etym: [G. sprossenbier; sprosse sprout, shoot (akin to E. sprout, n.) + bier beer. The word was changed into spruce because the beer came from Prussia (OE. Spruce), or because it was made from the sprouts of the spruce. See Sprout, n., Beer, and cf. Spruce, n.] A kind o…

A mountain that shoots from any other mountain, or range of mountains, and extends to some distance in a lateral direction, or at right angles.

Wearing spurs; furnished with a spur or spurs; having shoots like spurs.

A shoot; a bud. [Obs.] Holland.

To spurt or shoot in a scattering manner. [Obs.] Drayton.

n who is found at his standing in the forest, with a crossbow or a longbow bent, ready to shoot at a deer, or close by a tree with greyhounds in a leash ready to slip; -- one of the four presumptions that a man intends stealing the king's deer. Wharton.

f his led horse; . . . "I must stalk," said he. Bacon. One underneath his horse, to get a shoot doth stalk. Drayton.

To shoot with pain. [Prov. Eng.]

A small shoot, or branch, separated, as by a cutting, from a tree or shrub; also, any stem or branch of a tree, of any size, cut for fuel or timber. Withered sticks to gather, which might serve Against a winter's day. Milton.

A kind of crossbow formerly used for shooting stones. Shak.

To ramfy; to tiller, as grain; to shoot out suckers. R. D. Blackmore.

e or stretch beyond proper limits, as the branches of a plant; to spread widely apart; to shoot too far or widely in growth. Trim off the small, superfluous branches on each side of the hedge that straggle too far out. Mortimer.

Something that shoots, or spreads out, beyond the rest, or too far; an exuberant growth. Let thy hand supply the pruning knife, And crop luxuriant stragglers. Dryden.

A stream or column of light shooting upward from the horizon, constituting one of the forms of the aurora borealis. Macaulay. While overhead the North's dumb streamers shoot. Lowell.

A shoot from the roots or lower part of the stem of a plant; -- so called, perhaps, from diverting nourishment from the body of the plant.