spree
nounverbattested in dialogue
- //spɹiː//
Uninhibited activity.
noun
- 1
Uninhibited activity.
spending spree
Then all three major builders were called upon to deliver 105 Berkshires before the buying spree was over.
Twitter has been on a hiring spree, spending $630 million on stock-based compensation in 2021, a 33 percent increase from the previous year.
- 2
datedA merry frolic; especially, a drinking frolic.
Tradition says she spent the last two years of her life in the strange den I have been speaking of, after having indulged herself in one final, triumphant and satisfying spree.
It would be a long time before he could be like the majority of these men of the road, who roamed until the hunger for drink and for women mastered them, and then went to work with a purpose in mind, and stopped when they had the price of a spree.
Etymology
Unknown. According to Douglas Harper’s Online Etymological Dictionary, “a word of uncertain origin. Perhaps [Barnhart] an alteration of French esprit (“lively wit”) (see esprit). According to Klein, Irish spré seems to be a loan-word from Old Norse sprakr. Watkins proposes a possible origin as an alteration of Scots spreath (“cattle raid”), from Gaelic sprédh, spré (“cattle; wealth”), from Middle Irish preit, preid (“booty”), ultimately from Latin praeda (“plunder, booty”)”.
verb
- 1
rareTo engage in a spree.
And I never spreed with the fellows as a student any more than I had enjoyed myself with the lads in the playground.
Forms
- plural
- sprees
- past tense
- spreed
- past participle
- spreed
- present participle
- spreeing
- third person singular
- sprees
spree · Uninhibited activity.
Spree · A river in Germany that flows through Lusatia and into…spring · To move or burst forth.Spring · A surname.