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spale.

A chip or splinter of wood.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈspeɪl/
  1. A chip or splinter of wood.

    Scotland
  2. A lath; a shaving or chip, as of wood or stone.

  3. A strengthening cross timber.

  4. One of a number of crossbands fastened temporarily to the frames to keep them in place until properly secured.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English spale (“splinter”), perhaps partly from Old English *spalu (“flat bar, flake, chip”) or Old Norse spǫlr (“plank, rail, bar, short piece of wood”), both from Proto-Germanic *spaluz (“pole, rod, thin bar, lath”); and partly as an alteration of Old English speld (“ember, flake, torch, splinter, thin piece of wood used as a torch”), from Proto-Germanic *speldą (“that which is split, splinter, board”); both from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pala-, *(s)pel- (“to split in two, split in half”). Cognate with Middle High German spale ("rung of a ladder"; > dialectal German Spale (“a wooden split, wedge”)), dialectal Swedish spalu (“splinter”), dialectal Norwegian spel, spela, spila (“a splinter”), Icelandic spölur (“bit, short piece”). See also split.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.