spiel
/ʃpiːl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.66 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A lengthy and extravagant speech or argument usually intended to persuade.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
Example Sentences
- "I'd love to be there with a real pretty spiel / But three little words can explain how I feel"
- "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."
- "An Air Force recruiter (Gino Anania) visits her school and delivers a spiel about anti-terrorist successes in Iraq; she contradicts him with the plain facts of the 2001 attacks."
- "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.""
- "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."
- "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) […]"
Etymology
Borrowed from German Spiel (“game, performance”) or Yiddish שפּיל (shpil), both from Middle High German spil, from Old High German spil, from Proto-West Germanic *spil. Cognate with Old English spilian (“to revel, play”). See speel.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: שפּיל, spil, *spil, spiel, -, spel