Etymology Borrowed from German Spiel (“game, performance”) or Yiddish שפּיל (shpil), both from Middle High German spil, from Old High German spil, from Proto-West Germanic *spil. Cognate with Old English spilian (“to revel, play”). See speel.
1
A lengthy and extravagant speech or argument usually intended to persuade.
I'd love to be there with a real pretty spiel / But three little words can explain how I feel1910, Irving Berlin, “Dear Mayme, I Love You”:
The spiel ran on; the sale was brief and brisk; / The bargains fell to bidders, one by one. / Hope flushed my cheekbones with a scarlet disk.1939 May, Theodore Roethke, “The Auction”, in Poetry Magazine:
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An Air Force recruiter (Gino Anania) visits her school and delivers a spiel about anti-terrorist successes in Iraq; she contradicts him with the plain facts of the 2001 attacks.2024 September 11, Richard Brody, ““Winner” Takes Political Comedy Seriously”, in The New Yorker:
Watt gets his turn on the mic too, delivering an amusingly disjointed rap (following Minutemen tradition, he calls it a spiel) on "Me & You, Remembering."1991, Ira A. Robbins, The Trouser Press Record Guide, Howell Book House, →ISBN:
A typical Last Poets song consisted of a "spiel," an early form of rap where song verses were spoken over conga drum percussions or jazz music.2007, Jocelyne Cesari, Encyclopedia of Islam in the United States, Greenwood Pub Group, →ISBN:
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Drawing on the smooth and steady rap style of disco DJs, the proto-rap spiel of the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron, various other American and African American oral traditions (including, as mentioned above, radio disc jockey practice) […]2007, Mickey Hess, Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture, ABC-CLIO, →ISBN, page 17:
spiel
verb
Etymology Borrowed from German Spiel (“game, performance”) or Yiddish שפּיל (shpil), both from Middle High German spil, from Old High German spil, from Proto-West Germanic *spil. Cognate with Old English spilian (“to revel, play”). See speel.
1
To talk at length.
For a second our eyes met and he gave me a contemptuous smile, then he spieled again.1952, Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, Penguin Books (2014), page 433:
[…] Oedipa spotted among searchlights and staring crowds a KCUF mobile unit, with her husband Mucho inside it, spieling into a microphone.1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 5, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 103:
Etymology From the Scots spiel (“game, play; curling match”) from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German spel.
1
A game of curling.
The portion of ice set apart for a curling spiel was called the lead, rank, or rink (by which last name it is still described), and as it was then shorter than it is now — its ordinary length being 30 yards1890, John Kerr, History of curling ... and fifty years of the Royal Caledonian curling club:
On the Dock and Greensands the classical discus, or quoit, has in season due its modicum of disciples, (b) When the Nith is frozen over its surface becomes the scene of many a curling spiel1972, William M'Dowall, A. E. Truckell, History of the burgh of Dumfries:
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A few organizational difficulties marred this spiel and the next, but thereafter most of the wrinkles were ironed out.1989, Morris Kenneth Mott, John Allardyce, Curling Capital, Univ. of Manitoba Press, →ISBN, page 13: