Definitions

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

  • noun A cylinder of wood, plastic, cardboard, or other material on which wire, thread, or string is wound.
  • noun The amount of wire, thread, or string wound on such a cylinder.
  • noun Something similar to such a cylinder in shape or function.
  • noun A reel for magnetic tape.
  • transitive & intransitive verb To wind or be wound on or off a spool.
  • transitive & intransitive verb To store (data sent to a printer) in a buffer, allowing the program that sent the data to the printer to resume its normal operation.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A small cylinder of wood or other material (with a projecting disk at each end), upon which thread or yarn is wound; a reel.
  • noun The revolving metal shaft of an anglers′ reel, upon which the fishing-line is wound. See cut under reel.
  • noun In electricity, the reel or bobbin upon which a resistance coil, magnet coil, or sometimes the field coil of a generator or motor is wound.
  • To wind on a spool.

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

  • noun A piece of cane or reed with a knot at each end, or a hollow cylinder of wood with a ridge at each end, used to wind thread or yarn upon.
  • noun an article holding spools of thread, turning on pins, -- used by women at their work.
  • transitive verb To wind on a spool or spools.

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

  • noun A small swimming pool that can be used also as a spa.
  • noun A device around which thread, wire or cable is wound, especially a cylinder or spindle.
  • noun computing A temporary storage area for electronic mail, etc.
  • verb To wind on a spool or spools.
  • verb computing To send files to a device or a program (a spooler or a daemon that puts them in a queue for processing at a later time).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb transfer data intended for a peripheral device (usually a printer) into temporary storage
  • verb wind onto a spool or a reel
  • noun a winder around which thread or tape or film or other flexible materials can be wound

Etymologies

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

[Middle English spole, from Old North French espole and from Middle Dutch and Middle Low German spoele (Old North French, from Middle Dutch).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From spa and pool

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

This definition is lacking an etymology or has an incomplete etymology. You can help Wiktionary by giving it a proper etymology.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Loops in reverse.

    July 22, 2007

  • Spoooool. Used delightfully by Beckett in "Krapp's Last Tape".

    September 24, 2007

  • Simultaneous

    Peripheral

    Operation

    OnLine

    September 8, 2008