Word.ws English Dictionary

reel in

reel in verb: to bring (a fish etc.) out of the water by winding the line on which it is caught onto a reel (e.g. of a fishing rod).

Verb

reel in (third-person singular simple present reels in, present participle reeling in, simple past and past participle reeled in)

  1. (transitive) To bring (a fish etc.) out of the water by winding the line on which it is caught onto a reel (e.g. of a fishing rod).
  2. (idiomatic, transitive) To bring in (e.g. by attractive offers or persuasion); to lure.

Forms of reel in

third-person singular presentreels in
present participlereeling in
past participlereeled in
pastreeled in

Questions about reel in

What does reel in mean?
Reel in means to bring (a fish etc.) out of the water by winding the line on which it is caught onto a reel (e.g. of a fishing rod).
What part of speech is reel in?
Reel in is a verb.
What is the past tense of reel in?
The past tense of reel in is reeled in.

Words near reel in in the dictionary

  1. reeks
  2. reeksome
  3. Reekwich
  4. reeky
  5. reel
  6. reel in
  7. reel mower
  8. reel mowers
  9. reel off
  10. reel out
  11. reel oven

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: reel in (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-reel in.ogg.

Cite this entry: “reel in.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/reel_in. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.