spiel

Noun (1)

spiel (countable and uncountable, plural spiels)

1. A lengthy and extravagant speech or argument usually intended to persuade.
   • I'd love to be there with a real pretty spiel / But three little words can explain how I feel1910, Irving Berlin, “Dear Mayme, I Love You”
   • 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.1939 May, Theodore Roethke, “The Auction”, in Poetry Magazine
2. An early form of rap music.
   • 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."1991, Ira A. Robbins, The Trouser Press Record Guide, Howell Book House, →ISBN
   • 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.2007, Jocelyne Cesari, Encyclopedia of Islam in the United States, Greenwood Pub Group, →ISBN

Verb

spiel (third-person singular simple present spiels, present participle spieling, simple past and past participle spieled)

1. (intransitive) To talk at length.
   • For a second our eyes met and he gave me a contemptuous smile, then he spieled again.1952, Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, Penguin Books (2014), page 433
   • […] Oedipa spotted among searchlights and staring crowds a KCUF mobile unit, with her husband Mucho inside it, spieling into a microphone.1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 5, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 103
2. (intransitive) To give a sales pitch; to promote by speaking.

Noun (2)

IPA/spiːl/

spiel (plural spiels)

1. A curling tournament.
   • 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 yards1890, John Kerr, History of curling ... and fifty years of the Royal Caledonian curling club
   • 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 spiel1972, William M'Dowall, A. E. Truckell, History of the burgh of Dumfries