spring up

English[edit]

spring up (third-person singular simple present springs up, present participle springing up, simple past sprang up, past participle sprung up)

(intransitive) To appear suddenly.
A breeze had sprung up, pushing the ship back within range of the Spanish cannons.
(intransitive, figuratively) To come rapidly into existence.
- 1960 November, H. P. White, “The evolution of train services on the Southern's Oxted line”, in Trains Illustrated, page 662:
  In the 1890s and in the early years of the present century there was considerable building development in the area around Sanderstead, Warlingham and Oxted, where large villas were springing up. East Grinstead, Tunbridge Wells and Uckfield were growing fast, as was that loosely knit "subtopia"—neither town, village nor country—which is known collectively as Crowborough.
- 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
  The highway to the East Coast which ran through the borough of Ebbfield had always been a main road and even now, despite the vast garages, the pylons and the gaily painted factory glasshouses which had sprung up beside it, there still remained an occasional trace of past cultures.

to come rapidly into existence