Upspring

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ʌpˈspɹɪŋ/

Definitions

1. To move or leap upward suddenly ; a point where something begins or originates ; a plant cultivated and harvested in the spring season
2. The action of springing or rising suddenly upwards ; the beginning or source of something ; an early season crop sown and gathered in spring
3. An upward leap or growth ; the origin or starting place of an idea, event, or thing ; a plant yield produced during the springtime

Etymology: "Upspring" is a plain compound of "up" and "spring," and its Old English ancestor, "uppspringan," already meant to spring up, so the word has kept its literal sense for over a thousand years. The noun form, "upspring," is older in the record than the verb in its present shape: Old English "upspring" meant something like origin, birth, or a rising up, and it carried the same sense of a source breaking forth that a spring of water does. That noun sense links it to a family of cognates across the North Sea world. Old Saxon "upspring" meant a well or source, and Middle Low German "upspringen" meant to spring up or grow, so the idea of something welling or shooting up from below runs through the whole group. In English the word has stayed close to that image of a sudden upward rise.

Synonyms: emerge, arise, appear