Spree
name, noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Uninhibited activity. in-compounds
"spending spree"
- 2 a brief indulgence of your impulses wordnet
- 3 A merry frolic; especially, a drinking frolic. dated
"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."
- 1 To engage in a spree. intransitive, rare
"And I never spreed with the fellows as a student any more than I had enjoyed myself with the lads in the playground."
- 2 engage without restraint in an activity and indulge, as when shopping wordnet
- 1 A river in Germany that flows through Lusatia and into Berlin, where it flows into the Havel.
Example
More examples"Rumors of a Wall Street crash sparked a dollar selling 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”)”.
Borrowed from German Spree.
Related phrases
More for "spree"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.