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Meaning of spiel | Babel Free

Noun CEFR C2 Specialized
/ʃpiːl/

Definitions

  1. A game of curling.
  2. A lengthy and extravagant speech or argument usually intended to persuade.
    countable, uncountable
  3. An early form of rap music.
    countable, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“I'd love to be there with a real pretty spiel / But three little words can explain how I feel”
“The spiel ran on; the sale was brief and brisk; / The bargains fell to bidders, one by one. / Hope flushed my cheekbones with a scarlet disk.”
“An Air Force recruiter (Gino Anania) visits her school and delivers a spiel about anti-terrorist successes in Iraq; she contradicts him with the plain facts of the 2001 attacks.”
“Watt gets his turn on the mic too, delivering an amusingly disjointed rap (following Minutemen tradition, he calls it a spiel) on "Me & You, Remembering."”
“A typical Last Poets song consisted of a "spiel," an early form of rap where song verses were spoken over conga drum percussions or jazz music.”
“Drawing on the smooth and steady rap style of disco DJs, the proto-rap spiel of the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron, various other American and African American oral traditions (including, as mentioned above, radio disc jockey practice) […]”
“The portion of ice set apart for a curling spiel was called the lead, rank, or rink (by which last name it is still described), and as it was then shorter than it is now — its ordinary length being 30 yards”
“On the Dock and Greensands the classical discus, or quoit, has in season due its modicum of disciples, (b) When the Nith is frozen over its surface becomes the scene of many a curling spiel”
“A few organizational difficulties marred this spiel and the next, but thereafter most of the wrinkles were ironed out.”

CEFR level

C2
Mastery
This word is part of the CEFR C2 vocabulary — mastery level.

See also

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