speel
speel verb: to climb.
Verb (1)
speel (third-person singular simple present speels, present participle speeling, simple past and past participle speeled)
- To climb.
- This I thocht at the time when he was speeling up the ladder before me in the Hie Kirk steeple ; but good breeding, at that particular time, keeped me from taking ony correck view of how things stood in that quarter.1832 March 5, Memoirs of a Paisley Baillie, The Day: A Journal of Literature, Fine Arts, Fashions, &c., Glasgow, page 218
- They were catched speeling up the lamp-posts and taking oot the cruizes and drinking the ulye, wick and a′.1841, “Humorous Traits of an Old Highland Gentleman”, in Chambers′ Edinburgh Journal, Volume 9, Numbers 317-318, page 94
Verb (2)
speel (third-person singular simple present speels, present participle speeling, simple past and past participle speeled)
- To talk at length, to spiel.
- Old Saxon, who was so sweet and gentle despite his long years on the halls, smiled at me and suggested I should do some speeling. Yedo gave me a megaphone. I held it to my mouth but there was silence.1972, Sven Berlin, Pride of the Peacock: The Evolution of an Artist, page 91
- “I must close now or I shall go on speeling all night. […] ”1973, Irene Baird, Waste Heritage, Macmillan of Canada, page 262
Verb (3)
speel (third-person singular simple present speels, present participle speeling, simple past and past participle speeled)
- To run.
Noun (1)
speel (plural speels)
- A story; a spiel.
Noun (2)
speel (plural speels)
- A splinter; a strip of wood or metal.
Noun (3)
speel (plural speels)
- A game.
- To play a good speel.
Verb (4)
speel (third-person singular simple present speels, present participle speeling, simple past and past participle speeled)
Forms of speel
| third-person singular present | speels |
|---|---|
| present participle | speeling |
| past participle | speeled |
| past | speeled |
| alternative form | speil |
| alternative form | spele |
| alternative form | speal |
| alternative form | spiel |
| alternative form | spael |
Origin of speel
From Early Scots speill (“to climb”), of obscure origin. From or akin to Early Scots spelare (“acrobat, tumbler”). Probably from Middle Dutch spelen (“to play, walk a tight rope, do gymnastic tricks, juggle, perform as an actor or clown”), see spiel. Alternately, representing a continuation of Middle English spilen, from Old English spilian (“to play”).
From English dialectal speel (“talk; lingo; patter”), short for bonspiel. Related to spiel.
Probably from Afrikaans speel. Compare Middle English spel (“a story; tale; narrative”). Doublet of spell and shpiel.
Words formed from speel
Questions about speel
- What does speel mean?
- Speel means to climb.
- What part of speech is speel?
- Speel can be a verb or a noun.
- What is the past tense of speel?
- The past tense of speel is speeled.
Words near speel in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: speel (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-speel.ogg.
Cite this entry: “speel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/speel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.