REEL • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Reel

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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.

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.

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.

(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)

To roll. (Obs.) "And Sisyphus an huge round stone did reel."

To wind upon a reel, as yarn or thread.

Reel v. i.

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."

To have a whirling sensation; to be giddy. "In these lengthened vigils his brain often reeled."

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Etymology of 'Reel'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Reel" Quotes from Famous Books

... forget. His light hair was very long and silky, coming down over his coat. His beard had been prepared in holy land, and was patriarchal. He never shaved and rarely trimmed it. It was glossy, soft, clean, and altogether not unprepossessing. It was such that ladies might desire to reel it off and work it into their patterns in lieu of floss silk. His complexion was fair and almost pink; he was small in height and slender in limb, but well-made; and his ...

— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... that there'll be such an awful lot of news in it at first," went on Dick, "for I've got to learn this art of flying, and I don't expect to do any hair-raising stunts right off the reel. ...

— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis

... head fell, and her glance would have made any one shiver who had seen it; but her eyes were on her reel of thread. ...

— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... that one wants to do, and to feel that the matters themselves will be handled amiss and bungled. But if one can only keep the mind off, or distract it by work, or beguile it by a book, a walk, a talk, how easily the thread spins off the reel, how quietly one comes to harbour on the Saturday evening, with everything done ...

— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... beasts of the darkness hear; Till the Czar quake, till Austria cower for fear, Till the king breathe not, till the priest wax pale, Till spies and slayers on seats of judgment quail, Till mitre and cowl bow down And crumble as a crown, Till Caesar driven to lair and hounded Pope Reel breathless and drop heartless out of hope, And one the uncleanest kinless beast of all Lower than his fortune fall; 270 The wolfish waif of casual empire, born To turn all hate and horror ...

— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne--Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

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