weel
English
Pronunciation
- (General American) IPA(key): /wiːl/
- (US)
(file)
- (US)
- Rhymes: -iːl
- Homophones: weal, wheel (in accents with the wine-whine merger), wheal (in accents with the wine-whine merger), we'll (one pronunciation)
Etymology 1
From Middle English wele, wyle, welle, likely a fusion of Old Norse vél ("device"; compare Icelandic vél (“a contrivance to catch fish”)) and Middle English welwe, wilwe (“a weir, trap, or other device made of willow branches”), from Old English wilige, wylige (“basket”), related to Old English welig (“willow”).
Alternative forms
- weal (dialectal)
Derived terms
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “weel”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)
Etymology 2
From Middle English wel, Lua error in Module:utilities at line 142: attempt to perform arithmetic on local 'h' (a nil value), wele, wæl, from Old English wǣl (“weel, a deep pool, gulf, deep water of a stream or of the sea”). Cognate with Scots weil, Lua error in Module:utilities at line 142: attempt to perform arithmetic on local 'h' (a nil value), Middle Low German wêl (“a pool”), Middle Low German wêlen (“to swirl, whirl”).
Middle English
Adverb
weel
- Alternative form of wel
- 1387–1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Myllers Tale”, in The Canterbury Tales, [Westminster: William Caxton, published 1478], →OCLC; republished in [William Thynne], editor, The Workes of Geffray Chaucer Newlye Printed, […], [London]: […] [Richard Grafton for] Iohn Reynes […], 1542, →OCLC:
- He thakked hire aboute the lendes weel
- (please add an English translation of this quotation)
Scots
Adverb
weel (comparative better, superlative best)
- Well.
- Lua error in Module:utilities at line 142: attempt to perform arithmetic on local 'h' (a nil value)
Derived terms
- guid an weel (“well and good”)
- weel-kent (“well-known”)
Yola
References
- Jacob Poole (1867), William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, page 77