REEL • DICCIONARIO INGLES.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

... that thread is very fond of tying itself into a bow; but this can be prevented by threading the cotton into the needle before you cut it off the reel, making your knot at the end ...

— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... letter to the firm of Nucingen," answered du Tillet, perceiving that he could make his victim dance all the figures in the reel of bankruptcy. ...

— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... slenderest gossamer chance. He tried to think that the knowledge of her love would soothe him even in his dying hours; but the phantoms of what life with her might be would obtrude, and made him almost gasp and reel under the uncertainty he was enduring. Will's appearance had only added to the intensity ...

— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... you wear it is." I couldn't keep back my grattyfycashun, so I thanked him three or four times. You bet I was mad, wen I fownd out there warnt no cherry or mince pie, not even dryed appel, but only a lot of type wot had got mixed up. I think its reel mene to make a littel boy like me think hes goin to get a big feed, and then not give him enything but a lot of led wot nobodie ...

— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray

... are tired after the rehearsal?" enquired Mr Pilkington in his precise voice. He always spoke as if he were weighing each word and clipping it off a reel. ...

— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

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