rare. [app. a mispronunciation of SPRACK a.] Smart, clever.
The Shakespeare passage is the source of later instances, and has app. led to the insertion of the form in some dialect glossaries.
1598. Shaks., Merry W., IV. i. 84. M. Pag. He is a better scholler then I thought he was. Eu. He is a good sprag-memory.
1810. Lamb, Lett. (1888), I. 263. But the epitaphs were trim, and sprag, and patent.
1830. Scott, Lett., in Lockhart (1838), VII. 229. I had, being, as Sir Hugh Evans says, a fine sprag boy, a shrewd idea that his magnetism was all humbug.
