Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Sprightly; lively; brisk; alert.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Prov. Eng. & Scot. Quick; lively; alert.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective UK, dialectal lively, full of energy

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old Norse sprækr 'lively', from Proto-Indo-European *sp(h)er(e)g- 'to strew, sprinkle'. More at spark.

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Examples

  • For hear Allhighest sprack for krischnians as for propagana fidies and his nuptial eagles sharped their beaks of prey: and every morphyl man of us, pome by pome, falls back into this terrine: as it was let it be, says he!

    Finnegans Wake 2006

  • But though a _sprack_ lad, and fond of pleasure and its haunts, Harry Wakefield was steady, and not the cautious Robin Oig M'Combich himself was more attentive to the main chance.

    The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 10, No. 280, October 27, 1827 Various

  • Several members of the Austen family besides Jane were endowed with this faculty of invention - a faculty termed by Mrs. Austen "sprack wit."

    Jane Austen: Her Homes and Her Friends 1901

  • He observed, that "master was looking sprack agin; and warn't this a tidy room, like?"

    John Halifax, Gentleman 1897

  • John, like a great red-limbed overgrown moon-calf; and now here you are as sprack a squire and as lusty an archer as ever passed down the highway from Bordeaux, while I am still the same old Samkin Aylward, with never a change, save that I have a few more sins on my soul and a few less crowns in my pouch.

    The White Company Arthur Conan Doyle 1894

  • Burton's Anatomia hath it, a phrenesiac or lethargic patient, you would wonder where he hath sae suddenly acquired all this fine sprack festivity and jocularity.

    The Waverley 1877

  • "If you're small, you're sprack," said the miller's man.

    Jan of the Windmill Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing 1863

  • "Thee'll be a sprack man yet, Gearge," said the windmiller, encouragingly.

    Jan of the Windmill Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing 1863

  • He observed that "master was looking sprack agin; and warn't this a tidy room, like?"

    John Halifax, Gentleman Dinah Maria Mulock Craik 1856

  • If your Royal Highness had seen him dreaming and dozing about the banks of Tully-Veolan like an hypochondriac person, or, as Burton's ANATOMIA hath it, a phrenesiac or lethargic patient, you would wonder where he hath sae suddenly acquired all this fine sprack festivity and jocularity.

    Waverley: or, 'Tis sixty years since Walter Scott 1801

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