Sprengan

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. An Old English verb meaning to sprinkle or scatter liquid over something ; to make something jump or spring up into motion
2. Old English verb for sprinkling water or another liquid onto a surface ; causing something to leap, dart or start up suddenly
3. A verb from Old English meaning to besprinkle with drops of liquid ; to set something leaping or bounding upward

Etymology: Old English "sprengan" is the causative of "springan" ("to spring"), so its original sense was literally "to make something spring," and the two meanings in the gloss grow out of that single idea. Something that is made to spring up or leap is set jumping, and sprinkling was understood as scattering liquid so that drops leap or fly outward. The causative pattern is a common Germanic one: pairs like "sit" and "set," or "fall" and "fell," show a basic verb of motion paired with a transitive partner that makes something else move. The verb is a Germanic inheritance, with cognates in Old High German and Old Norse, and it sits in the same family as "spring" itself. Because "sprengan" is an Old English form, it belongs to the pre-1066 layer of the language rather than to any later borrowing, and its modern descendant survives in the spelling and sense of "sprinkle," a frequentative form built on the same stem.