Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To break up.
- n. A chip or splinter of wood.
- n. In ship-building, one of a number of cross-bands fastened temporarily to the frames to keep them in place until properly secured. Also called spaling.
- In mining, to inflict a fine upon for breach of some rule of the mine.
Wiktionary
- n. Scotland A chip or splinter of wood.
- n. A lath; a shaving or chip, as of wood or stone.
- n. A strengthening cross timber.
- n. One of a number of cross-bands fastened temprarily to the frames to keep them in place until properly secured; a spaling.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Prov. Eng. & Scot. A lath; a shaving or chip, as of wood or stone.
- n. (Shipbuilding) A strengthening cross timber.
Etymologies
- From Middle English spale ("splinter"), perhaps partly from Old English *spalu (“flat bar, flake, chip”) or Old Norse spǫlr ("plank, rail, bar, short piece of wood"), both from Proto-Germanic *spaluz (“pole, rod, thin bar, lath”); and partly as an alteration of Old English speld ("ember, flake, torch, splinter, thin piece of wood used as a torch"), from Proto-Germanic *speldan (“that which is split, splinter, board”); both from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pala-, *(s)pel- (“to split in two, split in half”). Cognate with Middle High German spale ("rung of a ladder"; > German dialectal Spale ("a wooden split, wedge")), Swedish dialectal spalu ("splinter"), Norwegian dialectal spel, spela, spila ("a splinter"), Icelandic spölur ("bit, short piece"). See also split. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Lat þine tunge habbe spale. þu wenest þat þes dai bo þinoȝe.”
Selections from early Middle English, 1130-1250 Part I: Texts
“Ef that he was payin '3 dollars a week, I should feel easier, bring your soing an' sett a good long spale. yours truly,”
“Deed, Dugald, I'm just taking this bit spale boardie hame below my arm.”
Bog-Myrtle and Peat Tales Chiefly of Galloway Gathered from the Years 1889 to 1895
“Little good, little ill, like a spale amang parritch, was that chap”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘spale’.
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Coal Mining Terms
Coal mining has engendered fascinating subcultures in industry, labor, music, folklore, environment and energy. It has a rich vocabulary as well, and I've encountered some gorgeous mining words. I...
firedamp, scrip, bituminous, anthracite, company store, blackdamp, brattice, bug dust, tipple, whitedamp, float dust, fly ash and 136 more...
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Cepstrums
to cepstrumize a word is to reverse its 1st 4 characters in the way that "cepstrum" was derived from "spectrum" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cepstrum...
acedy, adustion, sudation, aedility, ideality, agentive, negative, agral, argal, agrestic, ergastic, alerce and 202 more...
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Some Ship-building Terms
Ship builders' terms, from stem to stern (these words aren't on the list).
ledge, lay, leveling-block, mold-loft, munnion, planking, planking-clamp, strake, ram-line, ram, rib, ribband and 248 more...
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A few of my favorite definitions from...
I'm especially fond of ones written by Charles Sanders Peirce.
theodolite, illusion, buckie, frank, abstract-concrete, semidiagrammatic, object-object, vortex-filament, dod, parrock, cobler, weather-box and 354 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for spale.
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