spill.
To drop something so that it spreads out or makes a mess; to accidentally pour.
Meaning & usage
To drop something so that it spreads out or makes a mess; to accidentally pour.
I spilled some sticky juice on the kitchen floor.
To spread out or fall out, as above.
Some sticky juice spilled onto the kitchen floor.
To overflow out of a designated area.
The crowd spilled onto Maple Avenue.
To drop something that was intended to be caught.
To mar; to damage; to destroy by misuse; to waste.
To be destroyed, ruined, or wasted; to come to ruin; to perish; to waste.
To overflow or flow out, over or off something.
To cause or flow out and be lost or wasted; to shed.
To cause to be thrown from a mount, a carriage, etc.
To cover or decorate with slender pieces of wood, metal, ivory, etc.; to inlay.
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.
To open the leadership of a parliamentary party for re-election.
To reveal information to an uninformed party.
He spilled his guts out to his new psychologist.
To come undone.
To express (something), especially repeatedly or floridly; to be expressed.
He spilled insults about the other team.
Praise spilled from him every day.
Where this word comes from
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.
Any thing that has been spilled; the resulting mess.
A fall or stumble.
The bruise is from a bad spill he had last week.
Synonym of taper, a thin stick, long wick, etc. used to transfer flame.
A slender piece of anything. A peg or pin for plugging a hole, as in a cask'; a spile.
A slender piece of anything. A metallic rod or pin.
A slender piece of anything. A spillikin.
A slender piece of anything. A splinter caught in the skin.
One of the thick laths or poles driven horizontally ahead of the main timbering in advancing a level in loose ground.
The situation where sound is picked up by a microphone from a source other than that which is intended.
A small sum of money.
A declaration that the leadership of a parliamentary party is vacant, and open for re-election. Short form of leadership spill.
Where this word comes from
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.
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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.