SPROUT, verb intransitive [G.]

1. To shoot, as the seed of a plant; to germinate; to push out new shoots. A grain that sprouts in ordinary temperature in ten days, may by an augmentation of heat be made to sprout in forty eight hours. The stumps of trees often sprout and produce a new forest. Potatoes will sprout and produce a crop, although pared and deprived all their buds or eyes.

2. To shoot into ramifications.

Vitriol is apt to sprout with moisture.

3. To grow, like shoots of plants.

And on the ashes sprouting plumes appear.

SPROUT, noun

1. The shoot of a plant; a shoot from the seed or from the stump or from the root of a plant or tree. The sprouts of the cane, in Jamaica are called ratoons.

2. A shoot from the end of a branch. The young shoots of shrubs are called sprouts, and in the forest often furnish browse of cattle.