Other forms: dells
A dell is a small wooded hollow in the ground. A shady dell, down in the dell, a wooded dell.
It is a literary and old-fashioned word, kept alive by the nursery rhyme about the farmer in the dell and by place names. A dell is smaller and more sheltered than a valley, and the trees are part of the picture.
1noundellA small wooded hollow in the ground.
“The children found a quiet dell in the woods and built a den there.”
dell is a hollow.
DELL → a WELL, and it rhymes
A round green hollow out of the wind, trees all the way round the edge of it, and an old stone well down at the bottom.
hooks ontowell
Old English dell meant a small dale, from a Germanic root that also gave dale. The two are relatives.
Proto-Germanic
*daljō
Proto-West Germanic
*dalljā
Old English
dell — small dale
Middle English
delle
English, today
dell
From Middle English delle, del, from Old English dell (“small dale”), from Proto-West Germanic dalljā, from Proto-Germanic daljō. Cognate to Proto-Slavic dolъ (“below, down; valley, pit”), Welsh dôl (“meadow, dale”) and English dale.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA