sprite

noun

ˈsprīt

plural sprites

Synonyms of sprite next

: elf, fairy

: an elfish person

: a disembodied spirit : ghost

archaic : soul

: a form of electrical discharge that sometimes is emitted upwards from the top of a cumulonimbus cloud during a thunderstorm at the same time that lightning strikes downward and that usually appears as a red or reddish-orange flash of light

Atmospheric scientist Walter Lyons and his colleagues … noticed unusual behavior in storms over the plains: They triggered huge numbers of "sprites"—ghostly red glows of excited nitrogen molecules often seen high above violent storms.—

Robert Irion

: a bitmapped image or repeating loop of images that can move independently on a display often on top of a static background

Sprites are complex mathematically constructed models, sometimes simple (such as a computer cursor) and sometimes more complex, perhaps even humanoid in appearance.—

Stewart Fist

While the main character and enemy sprites in this … shooter are unusually large and detailed for the era, what really makes this game stand out are the highly detailed backgrounds that stand toe-to-toe with better-known NES games.—

Chris Freiberg

Gaming has grown from an eight-bit industry with sprites dancing across the cathode ray tube televisions of the '80s and '90s into a $180 billion global juggernaut with an audience that is larger than sports, movies and music combined.—

Andy Brownfield

Examples of sprite in a Sentence

the child insisted that he'd seen a sprite hiding in the garden told hair-raising stories of sprites and spectral ships

Recent Examples on the Web

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

The statue appeared to be a sprite, a depiction of a mythical being that serves as a guardian over the land. —

Stacey Barchenger, The Arizona Republic, 4 Dec. 2024 The top-down adventure has you, as a tiny Link sprite, proceed through the strange Koholint Island after being shipwrecked. —

Ashley Bardhan, Vulture, 27 Sep. 2024 The day this absurd, magical, laugh-out-loud-good little sprite of a footballer skips away into the past tense. —

Jack Lang, The Athletic, 14 July 2024 Developers are now using the code to see how many two-dimensional objects—known as sprites—HTML5 can generate at a time. —

IEEE Spectrum, 31 May 2011 See all Example Sentences for sprite