Definitions

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

  • noun A fortified house or tower of a kind constructed in the borderland of Scotland and England in the 1500s.
  • noun A long-handled, shovellike tool used by bakers to move bread or pastries into and out of an oven.
  • noun Printing A T-shaped pole used for hanging up freshly printed sheets of paper to dry.
  • noun The skin or rind of certain fruits and vegetables.
  • noun A chemical peel.
  • intransitive verb To strip or cut away the skin, rind, or bark from; pare.
  • intransitive verb To strip away; pull off.
  • intransitive verb To lose or shed skin, bark, or other covering.
  • intransitive verb To come off in thin strips or pieces, as bark, skin, or paint.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A fortified tower; a stronghold.
  • noun An equal; a match: as, they were peels at twelve.
  • To be equal or have the same score in a game.
  • noun The skin, bark or rind of anything: as, the peel of an orange.
  • noun Synonyms Rind, etc. See skin.
  • To strip the skin, bark, or rind from; strip by drawing or tearing off the skin; flay; decorticate; bark: as, to peel a tree; to peel an orange.
  • To strip off; remove by stripping.
  • Synonyms see pare, v. t
  • To lose the skin or rind; be separated or come off in thin flakes or pellicles: as, the orange peels easily; the bark peels off Swift.
  • To undress.
  • noun A kind of wooden shovel with a broad blade and long handle, used by bakers to put bread into or take it out of the oven.
  • noun In printing, a wooden pole with a short cross-piece at one end, in the form of the letter , used to convey printed sheets to and from the horizontal poles on which they are dried.
  • noun The wash or blade of an oar, as distinguished from the loom.
  • noun A mark resembling a skewer with a large ring (), formerly used in England as a mark for cattle, a signature-mark for persons unable to write, or the like.
  • To plunder; devastate; spoil.

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

  • transitive verb To strip off the skin, bark, or rind of; to strip by drawing or tearing off the skin, bark, husks, etc.; to flay; to decorticate.
  • transitive verb To strip or tear off; to remove by stripping, as the skin of an animal, the bark of a tree, etc.
  • noun A spadelike implement, variously used, as for removing loaves of bread from a baker's oven; also, a T-shaped implement used by printers and bookbinders for hanging wet sheets of paper on lines or poles to dry. Also, the blade of an oar.
  • intransitive verb To lose the skin, bark, or rind; to come off, as the skin, bark, or rind does; -- often used with an adverb.
  • intransitive verb nformal To strip naked; to disrobe. Often used with down .
  • transitive verb obsolete To plunder; to pillage; to rob.
  • noun Scot. A small tower, fort, or castle; a keep.
  • noun The skin or rind.

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

  • noun obsolete A stake.
  • noun obsolete A fence made of stakes; a stockade.
  • noun archaic A small tower, fort, or castle; a keep.
  • verb croquet To send through a hoop (of a ball other than one's own).
  • noun An equal or match; a draw.
  • noun curling A takeout which removes a stone from play as well as the delivered stone.
  • verb archaic, transitive To plunder; to pillage, rob.
  • verb transitive To remove the skin or outer covering of.
  • verb transitive To remove from the outer or top layer of.
  • verb intransitive To become detached, come away, especially in flakes or strips; to shed skin in such a way.
  • verb intransitive To remove one's clothing.
  • verb intransitive To move, separate (off or away)
  • noun The skin or outer layer of a fruit, vegetable etc. (usually uncountable)
  • noun rugby The action of peeling away from a formation.

Etymologies

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

[Middle English pel, stake, small castle, from Anglo-Norman, stockade, variant of Old French, stake, from Latin pālus; see pag- in Indo-European roots.]

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

[Middle English, from Old French pele, from Latin pāla, spade, peel; see pag- in Indo-European roots.]

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

[From Middle English pilen, pelen, to peel, from Old French peler, and Old English pilian (both from Latin pilāre, to deprive of hair, from pilus, hair) and from Old French pillier, to tug, pull, plunder (from Latin pilleum, felt cap).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Anglo-Norman and Old French pel (compare modern French pieu), from Latin palus ("stake").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French pele (compare modern pelle), from Latin pala, from the base of plangere ("fix, plant").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Named from Walter H. Peel, a noted 19th-century croquet player.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Misspelling.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Origin unknown.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Alteration of pill (verb & noun), perhaps under the influence of Old French peler ("peel"), piller ("pillage"). Perhaps connected to Latin pellis meaning skin.

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