Other forms: reels, reeling, reeled
To reel is to stagger — to lurch and sway with your feet fighting to stay under you. A boxer reels back from a punch to the jaw; a man reels out of the pub and steadies himself on a lamp post.
The word covers what your head does as well: you reel from bad news, and a whole town can still be reeling weeks later. A reel is also a thing — the spool that fishing line, sewing thread or film is wound onto — which gives you reel in (pull a fish, or a customer, towards you) and reel off (rattle out a list without pausing for breath). In Scotland and Ireland a reel is a fast dance, all whirling and hopping. Keep it apart from real: the two sound close in many accents and share no meaning at all.
1verbreelTo stagger or lurch about, close to falling over.
“He reeled backwards, caught the door frame and stayed upright.”
2verbbadlyTo be badly shaken by shock, so that your thoughts spin.
“The village is still reeling from the closure of the mill.”
3nounspoolA cylinder that line, thread, film or wire is wound onto.
“She clipped a new reel onto the fishing rod.”
4verbwindTo wind something onto a reel, or pull it in with one.
“It took him ten minutes to reel in the pike.”
5nounfastA fast Scottish or Irish dance, or the tune played for it.
“The band struck up a reel and half the room got to its feet.”
reel is a way of moving.
Reel goes back through Middle English to Old English hrēol, the winding frame that thread was wound onto, and behind that to Proto-Germanic *hrehulaz and a Proto-Indo-European root *krek-, 'to weave, beat'. The tool came first. The spinning, staggering person borrowed the word later.
Proto-Indo-European
*krek- — to weave, beat
Proto-Germanic
*hrehulaz
Proto-West Germanic
*hrehul
Old English
rēol
Middle English
reel
English, today
reel
From Middle English reel, reele, from Old English rēol, hrēol, from Proto-West Germanic hrehul, from Proto-Germanic hrehulaz, hrahilaz, from Proto-Indo-European krek- (“to weave, beat”). Cognate with Icelandic ræl, hræll.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, A Song of Ice and Fire
First appears in chapter 32 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word