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sill

Pronunciation: /sɪl/

The English word “sill” has 9 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A breast wall; window breast; horizontal brink which forms the base of a window.
  2. A threshold; horizontal structural member of a building near ground level on a foundation or pilings, or lying on the ground, and bearing the upright portion of a frame; a sill plate.
  3. A stratum of rock, especially an intrusive layer of igneous rock lying parallel to surrounding strata.
  4. A threshold or brink across the bottom of a canal lock for the gates to shut against.
  5. A raised area at the base of the nasal aperture in the skull.
  6. The inner edge of the bottom of an embrasure.
  7. A young herring.
  8. The shaft or thill of a carriage.

adjective

  1. Silly.

Etymology

From Middle English sille, selle, sülle, from Old English syll, syl (“sill, threshold, foundation, base, basis”), from Proto-Germanic *sulī (“bar, sill”), from Proto-Indo-European *sel-, *swel- (“beam, board, frame, threshold”). Cognate with Scots sil, sill (“balk, beam, floor, sill”), Dutch zulle (“sill”), Low German Sull, Sülle (“threshold, ramp, sill”), German Süll, Sülle (“threshold, sill”),…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.