sprain

Other forms of sprain

plural

sprains·

past tense

sprained·

present participle

spraining·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about sprain

What does sprain mean?

sprain means "a painful injury to a joint caused by a sudden wrenching of its ligaments". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in sprain?

sprain has 1 syllable: sprain. In IPA it is /ˈspɹeɪn/.

What is another word for sprain?

Close synonyms include twist, wrench, turn, wrick, rick. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is sprain a common word?

sprain is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.