anspringen

(an verb)

Meanings

1.
jump at someone
(In a literal sense. Think of a cat jumping a person. Spoken past goes with "haben" here.)
2.
to come on, to start
(Colloquial term for a car starting. NOT you starting the car. It's what the engine does.)
3.
to be triggered by, to react to
("anspringen auf+Acc" - the core idea is the same as for the engine. The sense of activating, but here's it's some sort of trigger that takes a person out of an idle state. Can be positive or negative. )

Word Family tap to show/hide

Root: *sprengh-

The original idea of the root was:

to move suddenly,  to spring

The only English offspring I could find mentioned in the sources is the word spring. And all its meanings actually come from this core idea.

  • to spring (suddenly moving)
  • spring -season (where stuff begins, flowers “bursting forth”)
  • spring – source (where water “jumps out”)
  • spring – coil (something that “suddenly jumps”)
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