Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Chiefly British An upland stretch of open country; a moor.
  • noun A barren or stony hill.
  • noun The hide of an animal; a pelt.
  • noun A thin membrane directly beneath the hide.
  • adjective Of an inhumanly cruel nature; fierce.
  • adjective Capable of destroying; lethal.
  • adjective Dire; sinister.
  • adjective Scots Sharp and biting.
  • idiom (at/in) All at once.
  • transitive verb To cause to fall by striking; cut or knock down.
  • transitive verb To kill.
  • transitive verb To sew or finish (a seam) with the raw edges flattened, turned under, and stitched down.
  • noun The timber cut down in one season.
  • noun A felled seam.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To cause to fall; throw down; cut down; bring to the ground, either by cutting, as with ax or sword, or by striking, as with a club or the fist: as, to fell trees; to fell an ox; to fell an antagonist at fisticuffs.
  • In sewing, to flatten on and sew down level with the cloth: as, to fell a seam.
  • To finish the weaving of (a web, or piece of cloth).
  • noun A cutting down; a felling.
  • noun In sewing, a flat, smooth seam between two pieces of a fabric, made by laying down the wider of the two edges left projecting by the joining seam over the narrower edge and hemming it down.
  • noun In weaving, the line of termination of a web in the process of weaving, formed by the last weft-thread driven up by the lay; the line to which the warp is at any instant wefted.
  • noun Preterit of fall.
  • noun The skin or hide of an animal; a pelt; hence, an integument of any kind.
  • noun A hairy covering; a head of hair.
  • Of a strong and cruel nature; eager and unsparing; grim; fierce; ruthless.
  • Strong and fiery; biting; keen; sharp; clever; as, a fell cheese; a fell bodie.
  • noun In mining, one of the many names of lead ore formerly current in Derbyshire, England.
  • noun Gall; anger; melancholy.
  • Sharply; fiercely.
  • noun A hill, especially a rocky eminence: as, Mickle Fell, Scawfell, and Scawfell Pike, the last the highest mountain in England proper.
  • noun A stretch of bare, elevated land; a moor; a down.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • imp. of fall.
  • adjective Cruel; barbarous; inhuman; fierce; savage; ravenous.
  • adjective obsolete Eager; earnest; intent.
  • noun obsolete Gall; anger; melancholy.
  • noun A skin or hide of a beast with the wool or hair on; a pelt; -- used chiefly in composition, as woolfell.
  • noun A barren or rocky hill.
  • noun A wild field; a moor.
  • transitive verb To cause to fall; to prostrate; to bring down or to the ground; to cut down.
  • noun (Mining) The finer portions of ore which go through the meshes, when the ore is sorted by sifting.
  • noun (Sewing) A form of seam joining two pieces of cloth, the edges being folded together and the stitches taken through both thicknesses.
  • noun (Weaving) The end of a web, formed by the last thread of the weft.
  • transitive verb To sew or hem; -- said of seams.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive To make something fall; especially to chop down a tree.
  • verb to strike down, kill, destroy
  • verb Simple past of fall.
  • noun That portion of a kilt, from the waist to the seat, where the pleats are stitched down
  • noun An animal skin, hide
  • noun textiles The end of a web, formed by the last thread of the weft.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English fel, from Old Norse fell, fjall, mountain, hill.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English fel, from Old English fell; see pel- in Indo-European roots.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English fel, from Old French, variant of felon; see felon.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English fellen, from Old English fellan, fyllan.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English fellen, from Old English fellan, fiellan ("to cause to fall, strike down, fell, cut down, throw down, defeat, destroy, kill, tumble, cause to stumble"), from Proto-Germanic *fallijanan (“to fell, to cause to fall”), causative of Proto-Germanic *fallanan (“to fall”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pōl- (“to fall”). Cognate with Dutch vellen ("to fell, cut down"), German fällen ("to fell"), Norwegian felle ("to fell").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English fell ("hide, skin, fell"), from Old English fell ("hide, skin, pelt"), from Proto-Germanic *fellan (compare West Frisian fel, Dutch, vel, German Fell), from Proto-Indo-European *pélno 'skin, animal hide' (compare Latin pellis 'skin', Lithuanian plėnė 'skin', Russian plená 'pelt', Albanian plah 'to cover', Ancient Greek péllas 'skin').

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old Norse fell, fjall ("rock, mountain"), from Proto-Germanic *felzan, *fel(e)zaz (compare German Felsen 'boulder, cliff', Middle Low German vels 'hill, mountain'), from Proto-Indo-European *pelso (compare Irish aile 'boulder, cliff', Latin Palatium, Ancient Greek palléa, pélla 'stone', Pashto parša 'id.', Sanskrit pāşāņá 'id.')

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English fel, fell ("strong, fierce, terrible, cruel, angry"), from Old English *fel, *felo, *fæle ("cruel, savage, fierce") (only in compounds, wælfel (“bloodthirsty”), ealfelo (“evil, baleful”), ælfæle (“very dire”), etc.), from Proto-Germanic *faliz, *felaz (“wicked, cruel, terrifying”), from Proto-Indo-European *pol- (“to pour, flow, swim, fly”). Cognate with Old Frisian fal ("cruel"), Old Dutch fel ("wrathful, cruel, bad, base"), Danish fæl ("disgusting, hideous, ghastly, grim"), Middle High German vālant ("imp"). See felon.

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