spool
Americannoun
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any cylindrical piece or device on which something is wound.
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a small cylindrical piece of wood or other material on which yarn is wound in spinning, for use in weaving; a bobbin.
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a small cylinder of wood or other material on which thread, wire, or tape is wound, typically expanded or with a rim at each end and having a hole lengthwise through the center.
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the material or quantity of material wound on such a device.
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Angling. the cylindrical drum in a reel that bears the line.
verb (used with object)
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to wind on a spool.
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to unwind from a spool (usually followed by off orout ).
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Computers. to operate (an input/output device) by using buffers in main and secondary storage.
verb (used without object)
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to wind.
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to unwind.
noun
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a device around which magnetic tape, film, cotton, etc, can be automatically wound, with plates at top and bottom to prevent it from slipping off
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anything round which other materials, esp thread, are wound
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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spoolsimple
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spoolssimple
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have spooledperfect
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has spooledperfect
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am spoolingprogressive
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are spoolingprogressive
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is spoolingprogressive
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have been spoolingperfect progressive
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has been spoolingperfect progressive
Past
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spooledsimple
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had spooledperfect
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was spoolingprogressive
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were spoolingprogressive
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had been spoolingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of spool
1275–1325; Middle English spole < Middle Dutch spoele or Middle Low German spōle; cognate with German Spule
Explanation
Fishing line, thread, and wire are usually wound around a special cylinder called a spool. If you enjoy sewing, you might buy spools of colored thread at the crafts store. Back in the days of cassette tapes, the magnetic tape would occasionally get tangled in the tape player and have to be wound back on its spool. You can use this word as a verb, too: "Will you spool that loose thread back on the bobbin for me?" Computer experts use spool to mean "store data temporarily," so they might spool computer files to a desktop folder, for example.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
DNA is tightly packed into chromosomes, similar to thread wound around a spool, and is often present in multiple copies that must be reliably passed on during division.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 20, 2026
Last year, the MGU-H - the motor generator unit on the turbo shaft - was used to spool up the turbo to aid performance in a number of ways, including at the starts.
From BBC ● Mar. 17, 2026
She points out the spool of paper tickets in the box office, now coiling on the floor and ready to be counted.
From Salon ● Dec. 18, 2025
A pinched approximation of a muted trumpet suggests some kind of mutant jazz unfolding nearby, while unpredictable pitch changes conjure visions of a tape slipping off a spool.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 18, 2025
He sat chewing his celery and staring somewhere past Despereaux, and then suddenly he leapt off his spool.
From "The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread" by Kate DiCamillo
By that point, stock traders had moved away from using old-fashioned stock tickers and their endless spools of paper tape.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 17, 2026
The spools of thread Carrie unravels eventually end.
From Salon ● Jun. 7, 2025
Gone are the endless spools of film that collected in university commencement offices.
From Slate ● May 27, 2025
Starting a TV series with a shocking flash-forward is a tiresome and overused narrative device, but once the plot spools back and the series finds its groove, it is superb.
From BBC ● May 7, 2024
For chairs, we used some smaller spools and a few crates.
From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls
The concern over the start process is centred on the increased amount of time it takes to get the turbos in the engines spooled up to the right speed for the optimum launch.
From BBC ● Feb. 18, 2026
As the decades spooled past, British society would become less deferential and British media more intrusive.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 4, 2026
Those DNA strands get packaged into chromatin fibers, which are spooled around histone proteins and then repeatedly looped to form highly compact structures that fit into the cell nucleus.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 13, 2023
Dressed in parkas and knit caps, the three volunteers lug crates of power tools and spooled wire into the gleaming mountaintop edifice that some have called astronomy’s “Sistine Chapel” and immediately start tinkering.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 3, 2023
I spooled the strands on my fork and rolled my two meatballs around until I got tired of that, and ate them both.
From "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez
They drag another dancer while he is on top of the sheet, spooling out a long and intricate head spin.
From New York Times ● Jan. 24, 2024
Jersey City firefighters literally reached the end of their rope, spooling out 200 feet of rescue line before turning back, not wanting to get themselves lost in the smoke.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 12, 2024
This ionized gas flows outward along magnetic field lines emerging from our star, spooling out in radial spirals tied to the sun’s rotation.
From Scientific American ● Jun. 8, 2023
Fishing fleets spooling out longlines—kilometers-long floating lines festooned with hooks—zero in on these same spots in pursuit of blue sharks.
From Science Magazine ● Feb. 1, 2023
And then it turns over, thinks a bit, and begins spooling backwards, slow at first. . . speeds up.
From "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" by J.K. Rowling
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
