REEL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • 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

... sketch he prized very much: Connie sitting on the stool before the wheel, her flowing mane of red hair on her rusty black frock, her red mouth shut and serious, running the scarlet thread off the hank on to the reel. ...

— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... shaft. The water-wheel moved only in one direction; the pinion on the wheel-shaft drove the spur-wheel, to which the pitman of the pump-bob was attached. On the spur-wheel shaft was a friction-gear, driving the hoisting-reel; this reel was mounted on sliding blocks, so that hoisting was done by putting it in gear, the empty load being dropped by a friction-band. Changing the size of the water-wheel as the pressure increased ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

... however, is wanted for aggression as well as endurance; and a mixture composed of pounded glass and rice gluten is rubbed over it. Having been dried in the sun, the prepared string is now wound upon a handsome reel of split bamboo inserted in a long handle. One of these reels, if of first-rate manufacture, costs a shilling, although coarser ones are very cheap; and of the nuck, about four annas, or sixpence worth, ...

— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers

... seems to rock and reel beneath the detonating roll of the volleys, the thunderous rumble of charging feet. The dark, glaring faces of warring demons, the flinging aloft of shields, the groaning and yells, the redness of the sheeting flames, all this ...

— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... sweel, From the fast-whirring reel, With a music that gladdens the ear; And the thrill of delight, In that glorious fight, To the heart of the angler ...

— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

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