The Collaborative International Dictionary
Spring \Spring\ (spr[i^]ng), v. t.
To cause to spring up; to start or rouse, as game; to cause to rise from the earth, or from a covert; as, to spring a pheasant.
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To produce or disclose suddenly or unexpectedly; as, to spring a surprise on someone; to spring a joke.
She starts, and leaves her bed, and springs a light.
--Dryden.The friends to the cause sprang a new project.
--Swift. To cause to explode; as, to spring a mine.
To crack or split; to bend or strain so as to weaken; as, to spring a mast or a yard.
To cause to close suddenly, as the parts of a trap operated by a spring; as, to spring a trap.
To bend by force, as something stiff or strong; to force or put by bending, as a beam into its sockets, and allowing it to straighten when in place; -- often with in, out, etc.; as, to spring in a slat or a bar.
To pass over by leaping; as, to spring a fence.
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To release (a person) from confinement, especially from a prison. [colloquial]
To spring a butt (Naut.), to loosen the end of a plank in a ship's bottom.
To spring a leak (Naut.), to begin to leak.
To spring an arch (Arch.), to build an arch; -- a common term among masons; as, to spring an arch over a lintel.
To spring a rattle, to cause a rattle to sound. See Watchman's rattle, under Watchman.
To spring the luff (Naut.), to ease the helm, and sail nearer to the wind than before; -- said of a vessel.
--Mar. Dict.To spring a mast or To spring a spar (Naut.), to strain it so that it is unserviceable.
Rattle \Rat"tle\, n.
A rapid succession of sharp, clattering sounds; as, the rattle of a drum.
--Prior.-
Noisy, rapid talk.
All this ado about the golden age is but an empty rattle and frivolous conceit.
--Hakewill. -
An instrument with which a rattling sound is made; especially, a child's toy that rattles when shaken.
The rattles of Isis and the cymbals of Brasilea nearly enough resemble each other.
--Sir W. Raleigh.Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.
--Pope. -
A noisy, senseless talker; a jabberer.
It may seem strange that a man who wrote with so much perspicuity, vivacity, and grace, should have been, whenever he took a part in conversation, an empty, noisy, blundering rattle.
--Macaulay. A scolding; a sharp rebuke. [Obs.]
--Heylin.-
(Zo["o]l.) Any organ of an animal having a structure adapted to produce a rattling sound.
Note: The rattle of a rattlesnake is composed of the hardened terminal scales, loosened in succession, but not cast off, and so modified in form as to make a series of loose, hollow joints.
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The noise in the throat produced by the air in passing through mucus which the lungs are unable to expel; -- chiefly observable at the approach of death, when it is called the death rattle. See R[^a]le.
To spring a rattle, to cause it to sound.
Yellow rattle (Bot.), a yellow-flowered herb ( Rhinanthus Crista-galli), the ripe seeds of which rattle in the inflated calyx.