weel

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /wiːl/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /wil/

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• Homophones: weal; we'll (stressed form); wheel, wheal (wine–whine merger)
• Rhymes: -iːl

From Middle English wele, wyle, welle, likely a fusion of Old Norse vél ("device"; compare Icelandic vél (“a contrivance to catch fish”)) and Middle English welwe, wilwe (“a weir, trap, or other device made of willow branches”), from Old English wilige, wylige (“basket”), related to Old English welig (“willow”).

• weal (dialectal)

weel (plural weels)

1. A trap for catching fish; a weely.
2. (botany) An arrangement of hairs that keeps insects out of flowers.

• weely

• 1900, Benjamin Daydon Jackson, A Glossary of Botanic Terms
• 1900, James Richard Ainsworth Davis, The Flowering Plant (page 112)

From Middle English wel, weel, wele, wæl, from Old English wǣl (“weel, a deep pool, gulf, deep water of a stream or of the sea”). Cognate with Scots weil, weel (“pool, eddy, whirlpool”), Middle Low German wêl (“a pool”), Middle Low German wêlen (“to swirl, whirl”).

• weil, wiel, wale (dialectal)
• wheel (Lancashire)

weel (plural weels)

1. (dialectal or obsolete) A whirlpool.

weel

1. Pronunciation spelling of will, representing Latino-accented English.

• “weel”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

weel

1. alternative form of wel
   • 1387–1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Myllers Tale”, in The Canterbury Tales, [Westminster: William Caxton, published 1478], →OCLC; republished in [William Thynne], editor, The Workes of Geffray Chaucer Newlye Printed, […], [London]: […] [Richard Grafton for] Iohn Reynes […], 1542, →OCLC:

     He thakked hire aboute the lendes weel

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

weel

1. alternative form of wel

weel (comparative better, superlative best)

1. Well.

weel (comparative better, superlative best)

1. Well.
   • 1794, Robert Burns, A Red, Red Rose:

     And fare thee weel, my only Luve
     And fare thee weel a while!

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• guid an weel (“well and good”)
• weel-kent (“well-known”)

weel

1. Well.

weel

1. alternative form of woul

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 77