Other forms: spilled, spills, spilling, spilt
To spill is to let liquid fall out of its container by accident. Coffee across a keyboard, red wine on a white tablecloth, milk going over the edge of the bowl before the cereal is even in.
Solids count too when they pour: a split bag spills rice all over the kitchen floor. It works with no object at all — light spilled through the gap in the curtains, and the crowd spilled out onto the street after the final whistle. The noun is the mess (there is a spill in aisle four), the disaster (an oil spill), and, in British use, a fall (a nasty spill off his bike). Both spilled and spilt are correct past forms, spilt being the more British of the two. Two fixed phrases arrive early: spill the beans, meaning give the secret away, and no use crying over spilt milk.
1verbspillTo let liquid or loose material fall out of its container by accident.
“He spilled tea down his shirt on the way to the meeting.”
Patternspill sth on / over / down + noun · spill out · a spill · spilt milk · spill the beans
2verbstreamTo pour or flood out of a place.
“Students spilled out of the hall and onto the grass.”
3nounamountAn amount of liquid that has come out where it should not be.
“A cleaner came to deal with the spill by the freezers.”
4nountumbleA fall, especially from a bike or a horse.
“She took a spill on the ice and cracked her elbow.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
SPILL → a river down the HILL of the table
Knock the glass over and the water runs off the table like a river down a hill: you spilled it.
hooks ontohill
Spill used to be far nastier. Old English spillan and spildan meant 'to kill, destroy, waste', from Proto-Germanic *spilþijaną, 'to spoil, kill, murder', and behind that Proto-Indo-European *(s)pel-, 'to split, rend, tear'. Spilling blood is the old sense still standing; spilling your tea is what it settled down into.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)pel- — to sunder, split, rend, tear
Proto-Germanic
*spilþijaną — to spoil, kill, murder
Proto-West Germanic
*spilþijan
Old English
spillan
Middle English
spillen
English, today
spill
Built from
From Middle English spillen, from Old English spillan, spildan (“to kill, destroy, waste”), from Proto-West Germanic spilþijan, from Proto-Germanic spilþijaną (“to spoil, kill, murder”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)pel- (“to sunder, split, rend, tear”). Cognate with Dutch spillen (“to use needlessly, waste”), French gaspiller "to waste, squander" < Germanic, bar spillen (“to split, cleave, splinter”), Danish spilde (“to spill, waste”), Swedish spilla (“to spill, waste”), Icelandic spilla (“to contaminate, spoil”). See also spool.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA