Other forms: spools
A spool is a cylinder that thread is wound on. A spool of thread, wind the spool, an empty spool.
The flanges at each end stop the thread falling off the sides, which is the difference from a plain bobbin in loose talk. Film and tape came on spools too, and in computing to spool a job is to queue it, from an acronym coined to fit the word.
1nounspoolA cylinder that thread is wound on.
“She put a new spool of white thread on the sewing machine.”
spool is a cylinder.
Middle Dutch spoele names the object, from a Germanic root. The word came into English through the cloth trade.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)pel- — to cleave, split
Proto-Germanic
*spōlǭ — spool
Old Dutch
*spōla
Middle Dutch
spoele
fro-nor
spole
Middle English
spole
English, today
spool
From Middle English spole (possibly via fro-nor spole, espole), from Middle Dutch spoele, from Old Dutch spōla, spuola, from Proto-Germanic spōlǭ (“spool”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)pel- (“to cleave, split”). Cognate with stq Spoule (“spool”), Dutch spoel (“spool”), German Spule (“spool”), Swedish spole (“spool”), Icelandic spóla (“spool; reel”). The aviation usage is based on the visual similarity of one of the spools of a turbine engine to a spool used for thread (especially in cross-section). See also spill.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA