Homonyms, Etymologically Speaking: S

Many words have two meanings, sometimes more, which are often very different. Such words have identical spelling and pronunciation, they are known as homonyms. Here I continue an A to Z list of such words and look at how that word came to have two different meanings.

S is for spring, be it the coiled metal or the season. The coiled metal, or any spring material, is seen in Old English springan 'to leap' and, along with related words in other languages, is derived from Proto-Indo-European sprengh 'to move, hasten, spring'.

The season following winter was named for the same reason. In the early 16th century it was said to be 'the spring of the year' and when the plants began to rise from the earth. But surely, I hear you ask, there were seasons before 1520? Of course, these were simply known by another name. Old English this was lencten 'Lent'; other Germanic languages used 'fore-year'; and French and Latin (the latter tempus primum) meaning 'first time, first season'.

Some spring expressions include 'spring fever', first recorded in 1843; spring upon, is first recorded in 1878; spring (used in freeing from imprisonment) not seen until 1900; spring chicken, first seen in 1780, really did refer to a chicken cooked in spring, and nobody was known as such until 1906 (and today is mostly used as a negative ie 'no spring chicken'). Spring cleaning, first recorded in English in 1843, began in Ancient Persia as Adukanaisa, literally 'irrigation-canal-cleaning month'.