sile
verbEtymology From Middle English silen, sylen, from Middle Low German silen ("to let off water, filter, strain"; > Low German silen, sielen), equivalent to sie (“to filter, strain”) + -le. Cognate with German sielen (“let off water, filter”), Swedish sila (“to strain, filter, sift”), German Siel (“drain, sewer, sluice”).
6
Northern England, UK, Dialectal To pour with rain.
- Th' rain had siled daan day and neet.1888, John Hartley, Clock Almanack, page 14, quoted in the EDD
- and so when there come on a long rain it fairly "siled" down a steady beautiful rain, so different from that of a thunder-rain, the latter fairly teeming down just as the milk was teemed from the pails into the sile. Teeming and siling , though much akin, were two very different operations.1916, Country Life, page 407:
3 more examples
- ... ya know what a wet un last year was, and how the rain siled down for days and days.1922, James Alpass Penny, More Folklore Round Horncastle, page 19:
- As the rain siled down outside, we discussed David Beckham, Ronaldo and Zidane – France's victory in the 1998 World Cup was fresh in their minds.2007 April 3, Kevin Rushby, Hunting Pirate Heaven: In Search of Lost Pirate Utopias, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, →ISBN:
- ... unaware of the pouring freezing rain which siled down and saturated him and which ran down his lank hair and over his cold face. The gun dropped limply from his hand onto the soggy grass, where it hissed as steam rose from the hot muzzle. He stood outside in the dark[…]2011 December 7, Paul Wordsworth, The Logic Bomb, Andrews UK Limited, →ISBN:
- Derived terms
- silt