Sprint

How to spell sprint

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sprint

What does sprint mean?

1. verbTo run at full speed over a short distance.
2. nounA short burst of running at full speed, or a brief period of intense effort.

Sprint in a sentence

• verb

  She had to sprint to catch the last train home.

• noun

  He won the hundred metre sprint at the county games.

• verb

  The dog will sprint across the field the moment the gate opens.

• noun

  The final sprint to the deadline left the whole team exhausted.

Where does sprint come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Sprint comes from a North Germanic root and is closely tied to Old Norse 'spretta', meaning to jump up or burst forward, and to a Middle English verb 'sprenten' that meant to leap or dart. The notion running through all of these forms is a sudden, explosive forward movement rather than steady travel. By the time the modern spelling settled in English, the word had narrowed to mean running at full speed over a short distance. It rose to prominence in the nineteenth century with the growth of organised athletics, where a sprint named a short, all-out race. The spelling is mercifully phonetic, so the main thing to remember is the consonant cluster 'spr' at the front, mirroring related words such as 'spring' and 'sprout' that all share the sense of bursting outward.

How the word is built

• sprint (single root from Old Norse/North Germanic 'to spring or leap'); no prefix or suffix