rill

From or akin to West Frisian ril (“rill; a narrow channel”), Dutch ril (“rill; gully; trench; watercourse”), German Low German Rille, Rill (“a small channel; brook; furrow”), German Rille (“a groove; furrow”).

• IPA^(key): /ɹɪl/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

  Rhymes: -ɪl

rill (plural rills)

1. A very small brook; a streamlet; a creek, rivulet.
   • 1750 June 12 (date written; published 1751), T[homas] Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”, in Designs by Mr. R[ichard] Bentley, for Six Poems by Mr. T. Gray, London: […] R[obert] Dodsley, […], published 1753, →OCLC:

     [N]or yet beside the rill / Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he

   • 1797, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “Kubla Khan: Or A Vision in a Dream”, in Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision: The Pains of Sleep, London: […] John Murray, […], by William Bulmer and Co. […], published 1816, →OCLC, pages 55–56:

     So twice five miles of fertile ground / With walls and towers were girdled round: / And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills, / Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree; / And here were forests ancient as the hills, / And folding sunny spots of greenery.

   • 1860, R[alph] W[aldo] Emerson, “Essay III. Wealth.”, in The Conduct of Life, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 101:

     The secret of success lies never in the amount of money, but in the relation of income to outgo; as if, after expense has been fixed at a certain point, then new and steady rills of income, though never so small, being added, wealth begins.

   • 1955, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King:

     Light grew, and lo! the Company passed through another gateway, high-arched and broad, and a rill ran out beside them; and beyond, going steeply down, was a road between sheer cliffs, knife-edged against the sky far above.

2. (planetology) Alternative form of rille.

• rill erosion
• rillet

rill (third-person singular simple present rills, present participle rilling, simple past and past participle rilled)

1. To trickle, pour, or run like a small stream.
   • 1862, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Il Mystico, 81-86:

     And fainter, finer, trickle far
     To where the listening uplands are;
     To pause—then from his gurgling bill
     Let the warbled sweetness rill,
     And down the welkin, gushing free,
     Hark the molten melody;

   • 1956, Anthony Burgess, Time for a Tiger (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 158:

     Alladad Khan was panting hard, soaked in sweat, and his rolled-up sleeve was all blood, blood rilling down his arm.

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

rill (present analytic rilleann, future analytic rillfidh, verbal noun rilleadh, past participle rillte)

1. (transitive) riddle, sieve, sift
2. (transitive) pour (as from sieve)

• rilleán m (“riddle, coarse sieve”)

• Ó Dónaill, Niall (1977) “rill”, in Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla, Dublin: An Gúm, →ISBN
• de Bhaldraithe, Tomás (1959) “rillim”, in English-Irish Dictionary, An Gúm
• “rill”, in New English-Irish Dictionary, Foras na Gaeilge, 2013-2024