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spindle

Pronunciation: /ˈspɪndəl/

The English word “spindle” has 20 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A rod used for spinning and then winding fibres (especially wool), usually consisting of a shaft and a circular whorl positioned at either the upper or lower end of the shaft when suspended vertically from the forming thread.
  2. A rod which turns, or on which something turns.
  3. A rotary axis of a machine tool or power tool.
  4. The axle of a bottom bracket.
  5. Certain species within the genus Euonymus, historically used to manufacture spindles for wool spinning.
  6. An upright spike for holding paper documents by skewering.
  7. The fusee of a watch.
  8. Any long and slender stalk resembling a spindle from Euonymus.
  9. A yarn measure containing, in cotton yarn, 15,120 yards; in linen yarn, 14,400 yards.
  10. A solid generated by the revolution of a curved line about its base or double ordinate or chord.
  11. Any marine univalve shell of the genus Tibia; a spindle stromb.
  12. Any marine gastropod with a spindle-shaped shell formerly in one of the three invalid genera called Fusus.
  13. A cytoskeletal structure formed during mitosis.
  14. A dragonfly.
  15. A plastic container for packaging optical discs such as CDs or DVDs, having a central column that passes through the central holes in the discs and keeps them in a stack.
  16. A muscle spindle.
  17. A sleep spindle.

verb

  1. To make into a long tapered shape.
  2. To take on a long tapered shape.
  3. To impale on a device for holding paper documents.

Etymology

From Middle English spyndel, spindle, spyndylle, from Old English spindle, spindel, alteration of earlier spinel, spinil, spinl (“spindle”), from Proto-West Germanic *spinnilu (“spindle”), equivalent to spin + -le. Cognate with Scots spindil, spinnell (“spindle”), Dutch spindel ("spindle"; < Middle Dutch spille, spinle), German Spindel (“spindle”), Danish spindel (“spindle”), Swedish spindel…

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