/spɪl/, [spɪɫ], [spɪo̯]
OriginFrom Middle English spillen, from Old English spillan, spildan (“to kill, destroy, waste”), from Proto-West Germanic *spilþijan, from Proto-Germanic *spilþijaną (“to spoil, kill, murder”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pel- (“to sunder, split, rend, tear”).
Cognate with Dutch spillen (“to use needlessly, waste”), French gaspiller ("to waste, squander" < Germanic), Bavarian spillen (“to split, cleave, splinter”), Danish spilde (“to spill, waste”), Swedish spilla (“to spill, waste”), Icelandic spilla (“to contaminate, spoil”). See also spool.
- transitiveTo drop something so that it spreads out or makes a mess; to accidentally pour.
“I spilled some sticky juice on the kitchen floor.”
- intransitiveTo spread out or fall out, as above.
“Some sticky juice spilled onto the kitchen floor.”
“He was so topful of himself, that he let it spill on all the company.”
- intransitiveTo overflow out of a designated area.
“The crowd spilled onto Maple Avenue.”
- transitiveTo drop something that was intended to be caught.
“That should have been that, but Hart caught a dose of the Hennessey wobbles and spilled Adlene Guedioura's long-range shot.”
- To mar; to damage; to destroy by misuse; to waste.
“They [the colours] disfigure the stuff and spill the whole workmanship.”
“Spill not the morning (the quintessence of day) in recreations.”
- intransitive, obsoleteTo be destroyed, ruined, or wasted; to come to ruin; to perish; to waste.
“That thou wilt suffer innocence to spill.”
“This winter’s weather it waxeth cold, / And frost it freezeth on every hill, / And Boreas blows his blast so bold / That all our cattle are like to spill.”
- also, figuratively, intransitiveTo overflow or flow out, over or off something.
“Liverpool Street's 1985-92 remodelling by the British Rail Architects' Department (under project lead Nick Derbyshire) had carefully followed original 1870s detailing, with the concourse designed to a”
- transitiveTo cause or flow out and be lost or wasted; to shed.
“to revenge his Blood, ſo juſtly ſpilt, / VVhat is it leſs then to partake his guilt?”
“The cracking sound, he explained, as far as I, a non-plumber, could understand, was the sound of the overworked, undermaintained and weirdly installed heating unit’s core rupturing and spilling water ”
- obsolete, slang, transitiveTo cause to be thrown from a mount, a carriage, etc.
“Then, not thirty feet beyond, a sudden panicky lunge to the side by his horse spilled him from the saddle.”
- To cover or decorate with slender pieces of wood, metal, ivory, etc.; to inlay.
“And all the others pavement were with yvory spilt”
- To relieve a sail from the pressure of the wind, so that it can be more easily reefed or furled, or to lessen the strain.
- Australian, transitiveTo open the leadership of a parliamentary party for re-election.
- ambitransitiveTo reveal information to an uninformed party.
“He spilled his guts out to his new psychologist.”
“‘You wanted to know where we were going. Follow me. I’m going to spill it.’”
- To come undone.
- transitiveTo express (something), especially repeatedly or floridly; to be expressed.
“He spilled insults about the other team.”
“Praise spilled from him every day.”
- countableA mess of something that has been dropped.
- A fall or stumble.
“The bruise is from a bad spill he had last week.”
- A small stick or piece of paper used to light a candle, cigarette etc by the transfer of a flame from a fire.
““In a moment, he has torn the letter into long thin strips, and rolling them up into spills he thrusts them hurriedly in amongst the other spills in the vase on the mantle-piece.””
“Kit froze with the pipe between his teeth, the relit spill pressed to the weed within it.”
- A peg or pin for plugging a hole, as in a cask'; a spile.
- A metallic rod or pin.
- A spillikin.
“A tool with which to extract the spills from the pile.”
- ShropshireA splinter caught in the skin.
- One of the thick laths or poles driven horizontally ahead of the main timbering in advancing a level in loose ground.
- The situation where sound is picked up by a microphone from a source other than that which is intended.
- obsoleteA small sum of money.
“Spill or Sportule for the same from the credulous Laity”
- AustralianA declaration that the leadership of a parliamentary party is vacant, and open for re-election. Short form of leadership spill.
Formsspills(present, singular, third-person) · spilling(participle, present) · spilled(participle, past) · spilled(past) · spilt(participle, past) · spilt(past) · spills(plural)