The AI-powered English dictionary
countable and uncountable, plural spiels
A lengthy and extravagant speech or argument usually intended to persuade. quotations examples
I'd love to be there with a real pretty spiel / But three little words can explain how I feel
1910, Irving Berlin (lyrics and music), “Dear Mayme, I Love You”
The spiel ran on; the sale was brief and brisk; / The bargains fell to bidders, one by one. / Hope flushed my cheekbones with a scarlet disk.
1939 May, Theodore Roethke, “The Auction”, in Poetry Magazine
(music) An early form of rap music. quotations examples
Watt gets his turn on the mic too, delivering an amusingly disjointed rap (following Minutemen tradition, he calls it a spiel) on "Me & You, Remembering."
1991, Ira A. Robbins, The Trouser Press Record Guide, Howell Book House
A typical Last Poets song consisted of a "spiel," an early form of rap where song verses were spoken over conga drum percussions or jazz music.
2007, Jocelyne Cesari, Encyclopedia of Islam in the United States, Greenwood Pub Group
Drawing on the smooth and steady rap style of disco DJs, the proto-rap spiel of the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron, various other American and African American oral traditions (including, as mentioned above, radio disc jockey practice) […]
2007, Mickey Hess, Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture, ABC-CLIO, page 17
third-person singular simple present spiels, present participle spieling, simple past and past participle spieled
(intransitive) To talk at length. quotations examples
For a second our eyes met and he gave me a contemptuous smile, then he spieled again.
1952, Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, Penguin Books (2014), page 433
[…] Oedipa spotted among searchlights and staring crowds a KCUF mobile unit, with her husband Mucho inside it, spieling into a microphone.
1966, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 5, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York: Bantam Books, published 1976, page 103
(intransitive) To give a sales pitch; to promote by speaking. examples
plural spiels
A game of curling. quotations examples
The portion of ice set apart for a curling spiel was called the lead, rank, or rink (by which last name it is still described), and as it was then shorter than it is now — its ordinary length being 30 yards
1890, John Kerr, History of curling ... and fifty years of the Royal Caledonian curling club
On the Dock and Greensands the classical discus, or quoit, has in season due its modicum of disciples, (b) When the Nith is frozen over its surface becomes the scene of many a curling spiel
1972, William M'Dowall, A. E. Truckell, History of the burgh of Dumfries
A few organizational difficulties marred this spiel and the next, but thereafter most of the wrinkles were ironed out.
1989, Morris Kenneth Mott, John Allardyce, Curling Capital, Univ. of Manitoba Press, page 13