Word.ws English Dictionary

spill

/spɪl/UK[spɪɫ]

spill verb: to drop something so that it spreads out or makes a mess; to accidentally pour.

spill: to drop something so that it spreads out or makes a mess; to accidentally pour
Image: Niranjan Arminius, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb

spill (third-person singular simple present spills, present participle spilling, simple past and past participle spilled or spilt)

  1. (transitive) To drop something so that it spreads out or makes a mess; to accidentally pour.
    • I spilled some sticky juice on the kitchen floor.
  2. (intransitive) To spread out or fall out, as above.
    • Some sticky juice spilled onto the kitchen floor.
    • He was so topful of himself, that he let it spill on all the company.1741, I[saac] Watts, The Improvement of the Mind: Or, A Supplement to the Art of Logick: […], London: […] James Brackstone, […], →OCLC
  3. (intransitive) To overflow out of a designated area.
    • The crowd spilled onto Maple Avenue.
  4. (transitive) To drop something that was intended to be caught.
    • That should have been that, but Hart caught a dose of the Hennessey wobbles and spilled Adlene Guedioura's long-range shot.2011 October 29, Neil Johnston, “Norwich 3 - 3 Blackburn”, in BBC Sport
  5. To mar; to damage; to destroy by misuse; to waste.
    • They [the colours] disfigure the stuff and spill the whole workmanship.1589, George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie
    • Spill not the morning (the quintessence of day) in recreations.1642, Thomas Fuller, The Holy State, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: […] Roger Daniel for John Williams, […], →OCLC
  6. (intransitive, obsolete) To be destroyed, ruined, or wasted; to come to ruin; to perish; to waste.
    • That thou wilt suffer innocence to spill.1387–1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Man of Lawes Tale”, in The Canterbury Tales, [Westminster: William Caxton, published 1478], →OCLC; republished in [William Thynne], editor, The Workes of Geffray...
    • This winter’s weather it waxeth cold, / And frost it freezeth on every hill, / And Boreas blows his blast so bold / That all our cattle are like to spill.16th century, Anonymous, "The Old Cloak", st. 1, as reported in The Oxford Book of English Verse (1900)
  7. (also, figuratively, intransitive) To overflow or flow out, over or off something.
    • Liverpool Street's 1985-92 remodelling by the British Rail Architects' Department (under project lead Nick Derbyshire) had carefully followed original 1870s detailing, with the concourse designed to allow natural light to spill into the station.2025 February 5, Dr Joseph Brennan, “Railway Heritage saved in 2024”, in RAIL, number 1028, page 53
  8. (transitive) To cause or flow out and be lost or wasted; to shed.
    • to revenge his Blood, ſo juſtly ſpilt, / VVhat is it leſs then to partake his guilt?1665 (first performance), John Dryden, The Indian Emperour, or, The Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards. […], London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for H[enry] Herringman […], published 1667, →OCLC, Act IV...
    • The cracking sound, he explained, as far as I, a non-plumber, could understand, was the sound of the overworked, undermaintained and weirdly installed heating unit’s core rupturing and spilling water into the basement.2007 February 18, Jake Mooney, “A Case of the Shivers”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 26 Nov 2022
  9. (obsolete, slang, transitive) To cause to be thrown from a mount, a carriage, etc.
    • Then, not thirty feet beyond, a sudden panicky lunge to the side by his horse spilled him from the saddle.2007, Eric Flint, David Weber, 1634: The Baltic War
  10. To cover or decorate with slender pieces of wood, metal, ivory, etc.; to inlay.
    • And all the others pavement were with yvory spilt1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
  11. To relieve a sail from the pressure of the wind, so that it can be more easily reefed or furled, or to lessen the strain.
  12. (Australian, transitive) To open the leadership of a parliamentary party for re-election.
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  1. (ambitransitive) To reveal information to an uninformed party.
    • He spilled his guts out to his new psychologist.
    • ‘You wanted to know where we were going. Follow me. I’m going to spill it.’1932, Delos W. Lovelace, King Kong, published 1965, page 32
  2. To come undone.
  3. (transitive) To express (something), especially repeatedly or floridly; to be expressed.
    • He spilled insults about the other team.
    • Praise spilled from him every day.

Noun

spill (plural spills)

  1. Any thing that has been spilled; the resulting mess.
  2. A fall or stumble.
    • The bruise is from a bad spill he had last week.
  3. (archaic) Synonym of taper, a thin stick, long wick, etc. used to transfer flame.
    • “In a moment, he has torn the letter into long thin strips, and rolling them up into spills he thrusts them hurriedly in amongst the other spills in the vase on the mantle-piece.”1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 182
    • Kit froze with the pipe between his teeth, the relit spill pressed to the weed within it.2008, Elizabeth Bear, Ink and Steel: A Novel of the Promethean Age
    Synonyms:
    taper
  4. A peg or pin for plugging a hole, as in a cask'; a spile.
  5. A metallic rod or pin.
  6. A spillikin.
    • A tool with which to extract the spills from the pile.1971, Gwen White, Antique Toys And Their Background, page 125
  7. (Shropshire) A splinter caught in the skin.
  8. One of the thick laths or poles driven horizontally ahead of the main timbering in advancing a level in loose ground.
  9. (sound recording) The situation where sound is picked up by a microphone from a source other than that which is intended.
  10. (obsolete) A small sum of money.
    • Spill or Sportule for the same from the credulous Laity1726, John Ayliffe, Parergon Juris Canonici Anglicani: Or, A Commentary, by Way of Supplement to the Canons and Constitutions of the Church of England. […], London: […] D. Leach, and sold by John...
  11. (Australian) A declaration that the leadership of a parliamentary party is vacant, and open for re-election. Short form of leadership spill.

spill meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

spill in Hindi

intransitive: to spread out or fall out
छलकना chalaknā

spill in Tamil

transitive: to drop something so that it spreads out
சிந்து cintu, கொட்டு koṭṭu

spill in Marathi

to spill
सांडणे sāṇḍṇe

spill in Urdu

ڈھلکانا, برباد کرنا, گرانا, پھینکنا, ضائع کرنا
More languagesFewer languages
spill in Bengali
ছড়িয়ে পড়া, উপচে পড়া
spill in Telugu
చిందు cindu
spill in Malayalam
തൂകുക tūkuka, ചൊരിയുക coriyuka, വിതറുക vitaṟuka
spill in Kannada
ಸುರಿಸು surisu
spill in Punjabi
ਰੋੜ੍ਹਨਾ roṛhnā, ਡੋਲ੍ਹਣਾ ḍolhṇā, روڑھنا roṛhnā, ڈولھݨا ḍolhṇā
spill in Gujarati
ઢોળવું ḍhoḷvũ
spill in Odia
ସ୍ପିଲ୍, ସ୍ପିଲ୍ କରନ୍ତୁ
spill in Nepali
स्पिल, स्पिल गर्नुहोस्
spill in Tagalog
lalahoy
spill in Arabic
دَلَقَ dalaqa, أَرَاقَ ʔarāqa, أَسْجَمَ ʔasjama
spill in Vietnamese
đổ

Examples of spill in a sentence

  • Those paper towels were amazingly absorbent. That was quite a spill.
  • A sudden chemical spill on the highway created a chain‐collision which created a record traffic jam.
  • If you need someone to spill your guts out to, I'm here.

All 40 example sentences with spill

Synonyms of spill

Forms of spill

Verb
third-person singular presentspills
present participlespilling
past participlespilled
pastspilled
past participlespilt
pastspilt
Noun
pluralspills

Past tense of spill: spilled or spilt

Plural of spill: spills

Origin of spill

From Middle English spillen, from Old English spillan, spildan (“to kill, destroy, waste”), from Proto-West Germanic *spilþijan, from Proto-Germanic *spilþijaną (“to spoil, kill, murder”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pel- (“to sunder, split, rend, tear”). Cognate with Dutch spillen (“to use needlessly, waste”), French gaspiller ("to waste, squander" < Germanic), Bavarian spillen (“to split, cleave, splinter”), Danish spilde (“to spill, waste”), Swedish spilla (“to spill, waste”), Icelandic spilla (“to contaminate, spoil”). See also spool.

Words formed from spill

Phrases with spill

Words that rhyme with spill

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about spill

What does spill mean?
Spill means to drop something so that it spreads out or makes a mess; to accidentally pour.
What is spill in Hindi?
Spill in Hindi is छलकना (chalaknā). See Spill meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is spill?
Spill can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce spill?
Spill is pronounced /spɪl/.
What is the past tense of spill?
The past tense of spill is spilled.

Words near spill in the dictionary

  1. spilitized
  2. spilitizes
  3. spilitizing
  4. Spilker
  5. Spilkers
  6. spill
  7. spill blood
  8. spill ink
  9. spill juice
  10. spill kit
  11. spill kits

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spill (page history and authors); सांडणे (Marathi) (page history and authors); spill (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Spill (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); చిందు (Telugu) (page history and authors); ചൊരിയുക (Malayalam) (page history and authors); ಸುರಿಸು (Kannada) (page history and authors); ઢોળવું (Gujarati) (page history and authors); spill (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); spill (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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-us-spill.ogg, en-au-spill.ogg.

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