dell

See also: Dell, Dëll, and dell'

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: dĕl, IPA^(key): /dɛl/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛl

Etymology 1

From Middle English delle, del, from Old English dell (“small dale”), from Proto-West Germanic *dalljā, from Proto-Germanic *daljō. Cognate to Proto-Slavic *dolъ (“below, down; valley, pit”), Welsh dôl (“meadow, dale”) and English dale.

Noun

dell (plural dells)

1. A small, deep, and wooded valley or sunken area of ground, especially in the form of a natural hollow.
   • 1794, William Blake, The Little Girl Found, lines 49-50

     To this day they dwell

     In a lonely dell.

   • 1722, Thomas Tickell, Kensington Gardens:

     In dells and dales, conceal'd from human sight.

   • a. 1881, Oscar Wilde, 'The Garden of Eros', in Poems‎^[1]:

     Already the shrill lark is out of sight,
     Flooding with waves of song this silent dell,
     ---Ah! there is something more in that bird's flight
     Than could be tested in a crucible!---
     But the air freshens, let us go, why soon
     The woodmen will be here; how we have lived this night of June![...]

   • 1955 September 15, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, Paris: The Olympia Press […], →OCLC:

     My very photogenic died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.

Synonyms

• dale
• dingle
• vale
• valley
• See also Thesaurus:valley

Derived terms

• Dell Prairie
• delly
• Fairy Dell
• farmer in the dell
• Hazel Dell
• up hill and down dell

Translations

sunken area of ground

• Czech: (zalesněné) údolíčko (cs) n
• Dutch: inzinking (nl) c
• French: vallon (fr) m, combe (fr) f
• German: Senke (de) f
• Hungarian: völgy (hu)
• Icelandic: laut (is) f
• Irish: fothair f
• Spanish: depresión (es) f
• Swedish: svacka (sv) c

Etymology 2

Origin obscure. Originally thieves' cant. Possibly from dell (valley). Compare Dutch del (“trollop, floozie”).

Noun

dell (plural dells)

1. (obsolete) A young woman; a wench.
   • 1621 August 13 (first performance; Gregorian calendar), Ben Jonson, “The Masque of the Gypsies”, in Q. Horatius Flaccus: His Art of Poetry. […], London: […] J[ohn] Okes, for John Benson […], published 1640, →OCLC:

     Sweet doxies and dells

   • 1896, John Stephen Farmer, editor, Musa Pedestris: Three Centuries of Canting Songs and Slang Rhymes (1536-1896), page -11:

     A Dell is a yonge wenche, able for generation, and not yet knowen or broken by the vpright man.

Derived terms

• arch dell
• wapping dell

References

• "mloyjja" in Green's Dictionary of Slang.
• The Century Dictionary (online edition)
• "dell, n.2" in Oxford English Dictionary (online edition).

Albanian

Etymology

Inherited from Proto-Albanian *daislā, from Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰiH-slo (compare Latin fīlum, Lithuanian gýsla, Serbo-Croatian žȉla).

Noun

dell m (plural dej, definite delli, definite plural dejtë)

1. (anatomy) tendon
2. sinew

Declension

Declension of dell

	singular		plural
	indefinite	definite	indefinite	definite
nominative	dell	delli	dej	dejtë
accusative		dellin
dative	delli	dellit	dejve	dejve
ablative			dejsh

Further reading

• “dell”, in FGJSH: Fjalor i gjuhës shqipe [Dictionary of the Albanian language] (in Albanian), 2006
• FGJSSH: Fjalor i gjuhës së sotme shqipe [Dictionary of the modern Albanian language]‎^[2], 1980
• Newmark, Leonard (1999), “dell”, in Oxford Albanian-English Dictionary‎^[3], Oxford: Oxford University Press

Cornish

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Conjunction

dell (triggers soft mutation)

1. as, how

Derived terms

• dell grysav (“as I believe”)
• dell hevel (“as it seems, probably, seemingly”)
• dell y'm kyrri (“please, be so kind as to”)
• dell yw sopposys (“supposedly”)
• dell yw usys (“as usual, habitually, usually”)
• kepar dell (“just as”)
• kepar dell via (“as it were”)
• yn mar veur dell (“for as much as”)

Mutation

Mutation of dell

radical	soft	aspirate	hard	mixed
dell	dhell	unchanged	tell	tell

Note: Certain mutated forms of some words can never occur in standard Cornish.
All possible mutated forms are displayed for convenience.

References

• “dell” in Cornish Dictionary / Gerlyver Kernewek, Akademi Kernewek.

Maltese

Root
d-l-l
2 terms

Etymology

Inherited from Arabic ظِلّ (ẓill).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /dɛll/
• Rhymes: -ɛll

Noun

dell m (plural dellijiet or dliel)

1. shade, shadow

Manx

Verb

dell (verbal noun dellal)

1. to negotiate, deal, trade, traffic

Mutation

Mutation of dell

radical	lenition	eclipsis
dell	ghell	nell

Note: Certain mutated forms of some words can never occur in standard Manx.
All possible mutated forms are displayed for convenience.

Middle English

Noun

dell

1. alternative form of delle

Old English

Etymology

From Proto-West Germanic *dalljā, from Proto-Germanic *daljō (“a hollow”)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /dell/, [deɫ]
• Rhymes: -ell

Noun

dell f or n or m

1. dell, vale

Declension

Feminine

Strong ō-stem:

	singular	plural
nominative	dell	della, delle
accusative	delle	della, delle
genitive	delle	della
dative	delle	dellum

Masculine/Neuter

Strong a-stem:

	singular	plural
nominative	dell	dell, dellas
accusative	dell	dell, dellas
genitive	delles	della
dative	delle	dellum

Descendants

• Middle English: delle, dell, del
  • English: dell
  • Scots: dell

Vietnamese

Etymology

From the company name Dell, which has the similar pronunciation.

Pronunciation

• (Hà Nội) IPA^(key): [ʔɗɛw˧˦]
• (Huế) IPA^(key): [ʔɗɛw˨˩˦]
• (Saigon) IPA^(key): [ʔɗɛw˦˥]
• Phonetic spelling: đéo

Adverb

dell

1. (Internet slang) Alternative spelling of đéo.

Yola

Preposition

dell

1. alternative form of del
   • 1867, OBSERVATIONS BY THE EDITOR, page 17:

     dell, for till;

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

References

• 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 17