spindle
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈspɪndəl/
rhymes: -ɪndəl
Forms: form: spindles
form: spindel
form: spinnel
Etymology: From Middle English spyndel, spindle, spyndylle, from Old English spindle, spindel, alteration of earlier spinel, spinil, spinl (“spindle”), from Proto-West Germanic *spinnilu (“spindle”), equivalent to spin + -le. Cognate with Scots spindil, spinnell (“spindle”), Dutch spindel ("spindle"; < Middle Dutch spille, spinle), German Spindel (“spindle”), Danish spindel (“spindle”), Swedish spindel (“spindle”).
The dragonfly sense (sense 13) is a calque of Swedish slända (dragonfly/spindle); this word was introduced by New Sweden settlers.
Senses: examples: text: Anna Pavlovna’s soirée was now in full swing. On all sides the spindles were humming away non-stop.
ref: 2005 [1868–9], Anthony Briggs, transl., War and Peace, Penguin Classics, translation of Война́ и миръ by Leo Tolstoy, Volume I, Part 1, Chapter 3, page 13:
topics: hobbies
lifestyle
spinning
sports
glosses: A rod used for spinning and then winding fibres (especially wool), usually consisting of a shaft and a circular whorl positioned at either the upper or lower end of the shaft when suspended vertically from the forming thread.
examples: text: the spindle of a vane
text: A doorknob of whatever roundish shape is effectively a continuum of levers, with the axis of the latching mechanism—known as the spindle—being the fulcrum about which the turning takes place.
ref: 2012 March 24, Henry Petroski, “Opening Doors”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, pages 112–3:
coordinate_terms: axle
shaft
glosses: A rod which turns, or on which something turns.
glosses: A rotary axis of a machine tool or power tool.
glosses: Certain of the species of the genus Euonymus, originally used for making the spindles used for spinning wool.
examples: text: check spindle
text: receipt spindle
coordinate_terms: bill hook#English:_office tool similar to spindle
billhook#English:_office tool similar to spindle
glosses: An upright spike for holding paper documents by skewering.
glosses: The fusee of a watch.
glosses: Any long and slender stalk resembling a spindle from Euonymus.
glosses: A yarn measure containing, in cotton yarn, 15,120 yards; in linen yarn, 14,400 yards.
topics: geometry
mathematics
sciences
glosses: A solid generated by the revolution of a curved line about its base or double ordinate or chord.
glosses: Any marine univalve shell of the genus Tibia; a spindle stromb.
glosses: Any marine gastropod with a spindle-shaped shell formerly in one of the three invalid genera called Fusus.
topics: biology
natural-sciences
glosses: A cytoskeletal structure formed during mitosis.
qualifier: coastal New Jersey
glosses: A dragonfly.
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
glosses: A plastic container for packaging optical discs such as CDs or DVDs, having a central column that passes through the central holes in the discs and keeps them in a stack.
glosses: A muscle spindle.
examples: text: One of the fascinating characteristics of sleep spindles is that they are generated by the thalamic reticular nucleus, and do not occur in the presence of NE. In fact, LC neurons fall silent in the second preceding each spindle […]
ref: 2010, Human Sleep and Cognition: Basic Research, page 10:
glosses: A sleep spindle.
Synonyms: sense: a tree from the Euonymus genus
word: spindle tree
Hypernyms: sense: a tree from the Euonymus genus
word: euonymus
Derived terms: central spindle
hemispindle
Japanese spindle
mitotic spindle
sleep spindle
spindle cell
spindle diagram
spindle-legged
spindle neuron
spindle poison
spindle-shanked
spindle-shaped
spindle toxin
Related terms: word: fusiform