Skip to the word

Added 8 October 2026

sprite

/spɹaɪt/ noun

Latin root: spīritus First recorded: 1970 Wiktionary

noun Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). Pronunciation from Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org. More about sprite at Wordnik → Where our words come from →

Any of various supernatural beings, loosely defined: A spirit; a soul; a shade. An apparition; a ghost. An elf, fairy, or goblin; one with a small humanlike physical body.
A spirit; a soul; a shade.
An apparition; a ghost.

verb

To draw a (specifically) pixel art sprite.
sprited the new NPCs

Origin

From Middle English sprite, spryt, spreyte, from Old French esprit (“spirit”), from Latin spīritus. Doublet of spirit, spiritus, spirytus, spright, and esprit. (computer graphics): First used by Danny Hillis at Texas Instruments in the late 1970s. (meteorology): An acronym for Stratospheric Perturbations Resulting from Intense Thunderstorm Electrification.

From Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org (CC BY-SA)

Back to today's word