Watersprout

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An upright shoot growing from a latent (dormant) bud on the trunk or older branch of a tree.

    "... watersprout, or from the old typical bearing wood. / MR. KOETHEN. I have yet failed to know what a watersprout is. If you will give any healthy limb that comes from a tree plenty of light and air, it will develop into fruit[…]"

Example

More examples

"... watersprout, or from the old typical bearing wood. / MR. KOETHEN. I have yet failed to know what a watersprout is. If you will give any healthy limb that comes from a tree plenty of light and air, it will develop into fruit[…]"

Etymology

From water + sprout?

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.