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Reel   /ril/   Listen
noun
Reel  n.  A lively dance of the Highlanders of Scotland; also, the music to the dance; often called Scotch reel.
Virginia reel, the common name throughout the United States for the old English "country dance," or contradance (contredanse).


Reel  n.  
1.
A frame with radial arms, or a kind of spool, turning on an axis, on which yarn, threads, lines, or the like, are wound; as, a log reel, used by seamen; an angler's reel; a garden reel.
2.
A machine on which yarn is wound and measured into lays and hanks, for cotton or linen it is fifty-four inches in circuit; for worsted, thirty inches.
3.
(Agric.) A device consisting of radial arms with horizontal stats, connected with a harvesting machine, for holding the stalks of grain in position to be cut by the knives.
Reel oven, a baker's oven in which bread pans hang suspended from the arms of a kind of reel revolving on a horizontal axis.


Reel  n.  The act or motion of reeling or staggering; as, a drunken reel.


verb
Reel  v. t.  (past & past part. reeled; pres. part. reeling)  
1.
To roll. (Obs.) "And Sisyphus an huge round stone did reel."
2.
To wind upon a reel, as yarn or thread.


Reel  v. i.  
1.
To incline, in walking, from one side to the other; to stagger. "They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man." "He, with heavy fumes oppressed, Reeled from the palace, and retired to rest." "The wagons reeling under the yellow sheaves."
2.
To have a whirling sensation; to be giddy. "In these lengthened vigils his brain often reeled."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Reel" Quotes from Famous Books



... looked at her wistfully in pity for the little weak figure that would reel beneath the blow of ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... England is at war With any foreign nation, We fear not wound or scar; Our roaring guns shall teach 'em Our valour for to know, Whilst they reel on the keel, And the stormy winds do blow. And ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... hentertaned that they wood have to cum again shortly; but they are bold plucky gents, is the men of the Copperashun, and they one and all xpressed their reddiness to do it at the call of dooty. Besides, we had sich a reel Commodore a board as made us all quite reddy to brave the foaming waves again. Why, he guv out the word of command, whether it was to "Port the Helem," or to "Titen the mane braces," as if he had bin a Hadmiral at the werry ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... close-fitting door and supply it with wooden hinges and a neat latch. From the roots of an oak or ash he could fashion his hames and sled runners; he could make an axle-tree for his wagon, a rake, a flax brake, a barrow, a scythe-snath, a grain cradle a pitchfork, a loom, a reel, a washboard, a stool, a chair, a table, a bedstead, a dresser, and a cradle in which to rock the baby. If he was more than ordinarily clever, he repaired his own cooperage, and adding a drawing ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... flickered before his mind's eye, as though his brain had built up a five-reel mental movie from all sorts of memory film; a hundred feet of this, two hundred of that, a thousand here, there just a flash. It had all one common mark; it was all "the church," but the hit-and-miss of it, its lightning change, bewildered him. The ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt


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