Reel /(rēl)/

Reel

n.
  1. A lively dance of the Highlanders of Scotland; also, the music to the dance; -- often called Scotch reel.

Phrases & Compounds
Virginia reel
the common name throughout the United States for the old English “country dance,” or contradance (contredanse).

Reel

n.
  1. A frame with radial arms, or a kind of spool, turning on an axis, on which yarn, threads, lines, or the like, are wound; as, a log reel, used by seamen; an angler's reel; a garden reel.
  2. A machine on which yarn is wound and measured into lays and hanks, -- for cotton or linen it is fifty-four inches in circuit; for worsted, thirty inches.
  3. A device consisting of radial arms with horizontal stats, connected with a harvesting machine, for holding the stalks of grain in position to be cut by the knives. (Agric.)

Phrases & Compounds
Reel oven
a baker's oven in which bread pans hang suspended from the arms of a kind of reel revolving on a horizontal axis.

Reel

v. t.

imp. & p. p. Reeled; p. pr. & vb. n. Reeling

  1. To roll. [Obs.]
    And Sisyphus an huge round stone did reel.
  2. To wind upon a reel, as yarn or thread.

Reel

v. i.
  1. To incline, in walking, from one side to the other; to stagger.
    They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man.
    — Ps. cvii. 27.
    He, with heavy fumes oppressed, Reeled from the palace, and retired to rest.
    The wagons reeling under the yellow sheaves.
  2. To have a whirling sensation; to be giddy.
    In these lengthened vigils his brain often reeled.

Reel

n.
  1. The act or motion of reeling or staggering; as, a drunken reel.