Word.ws English Dictionary

sile

/saɪl/

sile noun: a column; pillar.

Noun (1)

sile (plural siles)

  1. (dialectal) A column; pillar.
  2. (dialectal) A beam; rafter; one of the principal rafters of a building.
  3. (dialectal) The foot or lower part of a couple or rafter; base.
  4. (dialectal) A roof rafter or couple, usually one of a pair.

Verb

sile (third-person singular simple present siles, present participle siling, simple past and past participle siled)

  1. (UK, dialectal, transitive) To strain, as milk; pass through a strainer or anything similar; filter.
  2. (UK, dialectal, intransitive) To flow down; drip; drop; fall; sink.
  3. (UK, dialectal, intransitive) To settle down; calm or compose oneself.
  4. (UK, dialectal, intransitive) To go; pass.
  5. (UK, dialectal, intransitive) To boil gently; simmer.
  6. (Northern England, UK, dialectal, intransitive) To pour with rain.
    • Th' rain had siled daan day and neet.1888, John Hartley, Clock Almanack, page 14, quoted in the EDD
    • and so when there come on a long rain it fairly "siled" down a steady beautiful rain, so different from that of a thunder-rain, the latter fairly teeming down just as the milk was teemed from the pails into the sile. Teeming and siling , though much akin, were two very different operations.1916, Country Life, page 407

Noun (2)

sile (plural siles)

  1. A sieve.
  2. A strainer or colander for liquids
  3. That which is sifted or strained, hence, settlings; sediment; filth.

Noun (3)

sile (plural siles)

  1. A young herring.

Proper noun capitalized: Sile

Sile

  1. (alternative) Alternative spelling of Sheila.

Examples of sile in a sentence

  • ... ya know what a wet un last year was, and how the rain siled down for days and days.1922, James Alpass Penny, More Folklore Round Horncastle, page 19:
  • As the rain siled down outside, we discussed David Beckham, Ronaldo and Zidane – France's victory in the 1998 World Cup was fresh in their minds.2007 April 3, Kevin Rushby, Hunting Pirate Heaven: In Search of Lost Pirate Utopias, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, →ISBN:
  • ... unaware of the pouring freezing rain which siled down and saturated him and which ran down his lank hair and over his cold face.2011 December 7, Paul Wordsworth, The Logic Bomb, Andrews UK Limited, →ISBN:

Forms of sile

Noun
pluralsiles
alternative formsyle
alternative formcyle
Verb
third-person singular presentsiles
present participlesiling
past participlesiled
pastsiled

Origin of sile

From Middle English syle, from Old English sȳl (“column, pillar, support”), from Proto-West Germanic *sūli, from Proto-Germanic *sūliz (“beam, post, column, pillar”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱsewl-, *ḱswel- (“log”), from *ḱsew-, *ḱes- (“to scratch, comb”). Cognate with Dutch zuil (“pillar”), German Säule (“column, pillar”), Norwegian søyle (“pillar”), Icelandic súla (“column”), Gothic 𐍃𐌰𐌿𐌻𐍃 (sauls, “pillar”).

From Middle English silen, sylen, from Middle Low German silen ("to let off water, filter, strain"; > Low German silen, sielen), equivalent to sie (“to filter, strain”) + -le. Cognate with German sielen (“let off water, filter”), Swedish sila (“to strain, filter, sift”), German Siel (“drain, sewer, sluice”).

From Middle English *sile, from Old Norse síl (“herring”), from Proto-Germanic *sīlą, *sīlō (“herring”), of unknown origin. Cognate with Icelandic síld (“herring”), Norwegian and Danish sild (“herring”), dialectal Swedish sil (“young fish, fry”). Compare sild.

Words formed from sile

Words that rhyme with sile

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sile

What does sile mean?
Sile means a column; pillar.
How do you use sile in a sentence?
... ya know what a wet un last year was, and how the rain siled down for days and days.
What part of speech is sile?
Sile can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce sile?
Sile is pronounced /saɪl/.
What is the plural of sile?
The plural of sile is siles.

Words near sile in the dictionary

  1. sild
  2. sildenafil
  3. sildenafil citrate
  4. sildenafils
  5. silds
  6. sile
  7. sileage
  8. sileages
  9. Sileby
  10. Silecroft
  11. siled

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sile (page history and authors); Sile (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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Cite this entry: “sile.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sile. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.