/ʃpiːl/, /spiːl/
OriginBorrowed from German Spiel (“game, performance”) or Yiddish שפּיל (shpil), both from Middle High German spil, from Old High German spil, from Proto-West Germanic *spil.
Cognate with Old English spilian (“to revel, play”). See speel.
- countable, uncountableA lengthy and extravagant speech or argument usually intended to persuade.
“I'd love to be there with a real pretty spiel / But three little words can explain how I feel”
“The spiel ran on; the sale was brief and brisk; / The bargains fell to bidders, one by one. / Hope flushed my cheekbones with a scarlet disk.”
“An Air Force recruiter (Gino Anania) visits her school and delivers a spiel about anti-terrorist successes in Iraq; she contradicts him with the plain facts of the 2001 attacks.”
- countable, uncountableAn early form of rap music.
“Watt gets his turn on the mic too, delivering an amusingly disjointed rap (following Minutemen tradition, he calls it a spiel) on "Me & You, Remembering."”
“A typical Last Poets song consisted of a "spiel," an early form of rap where song verses were spoken over conga drum percussions or jazz music.”
“Drawing on the smooth and steady rap style of disco DJs, the proto-rap spiel of the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron, various other American and African American oral traditions (including, as mentioned”
- A game of curling.
“The portion of ice set apart for a curling spiel was called the lead, rank, or rink (by which last name it is still described), and as it was then shorter than it is now — its ordinary length being 30”
“On the Dock and Greensands the classical discus, or quoit, has in season due its modicum of disciples, (b) When the Nith is frozen over its surface becomes the scene of many a curling spiel”
“A few organizational difficulties marred this spiel and the next, but thereafter most of the wrinkles were ironed out.”
- intransitiveTo talk at length.
“For a second our eyes met and he gave me a contemptuous smile, then he spieled again.”
“[…] Oedipa spotted among searchlights and staring crowds a KCUF mobile unit, with her husband Mucho inside it, spieling into a microphone.”
- intransitiveTo give a sales pitch; to promote by speaking.
Formsspiels(plural) · shpeal(alternative) · schpeal(alternative) · shpiel(alternative) · schpiel(alternative) · schpeel(alternative) · spiels(present, singular, third-person) · spieling(participle, present) · spieled(participle, past) · spieled(past)