Meaning of spell | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A shift (of work); (rare) a set of workers responsible for a specific turn of labour.
2. A splinter, usually of wood; a spelk.
   Northern-England
3. A surname.
4. Words or a formula supposed to have magical powers.
5. A magical effect or influence induced by an incantation or formula.
6. A definite period (of work or other activity).
   informal
7. The wooden bat in the game of trap ball, or knurr and spell.
8. Speech, discourse.
   obsolete
9. An indefinite period of time (usually with a qualifier); by extension, a relatively short distance.
   colloquial
10. A period of rest; time off.
11. A period of illness, or sudden interval of bad spirits, disease etc.
    US, colloquial
12. An uninterrupted series of alternate overs bowled by a single bowler.

Equivalents

Examples

“He cast a spell to cure warts.”

“under a spell”

“Skies are not so black / Mary took me back / Mary has broken your spell”

“I believe your love has placed its spell on me”

“A chap named Eleazir Kendrick and I had chummed in together the summer afore and built a fish-weir and shanty at Setuckit Point, down Orham way. For a spell we done pretty well. Then there came a reg'lar terror of a sou'wester same as you don't get one summer in a thousand, and blowed the shanty flat and ripped about half of the weir poles out of the sand.”

“I had a job in the great North Woods / Workin' as a cook for a spell / But I never did like it all that much / And one day the ax just fell”

“Despite his ill-fated spell at Anfield, he received a warm reception from the same Liverpool fans he struggled to win over before being sacked midway through last season.”

“Even Mrs. Harker seems to lose sight of her trouble for whole spells. [...] When he had spoken, Mina's long spell of silence made me look at her.”

“So after a short spell in the brass foundry the wisest course was to follow with a similar period in the steel foundry, where much important work was done, including the manufacture of centres for wheels.”

“[...] Class 37s became synonymous with the depot, and over the years more than a third of the class had a spell allocated to the shed.”

“To swadle a bowe much about wyth bandes, verye seldome dothe anye good, excepte it be to kepe downe a spel in the backe.”

CEFR level