rill
A very small brook; a streamlet; a creek, rivulet.
Noun
- A very small brook; a streamlet; a creek, rivulet.
- [N]or yet beside the rill / Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he - 1750 June 12 (date written; published 1751), T[homas] Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”, in Designs by Mr. R[ichard] Bentley, for Six...
- So twice five miles of fertile ground / With walls and towers were girdled round: / And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills, / Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree; / And here were forests ancient as the...
- The secret of success lies never in the amount of money, but in the relation of income to outgo; as if, after expense has been fixed at a certain point, then new and steady rills of income, though never so small, being...
- Alternative form of rille.
Origin
From or akin to West Frisian ril (“rill; a narrow channel”), Dutch ril (“rill; gully; trench; watercourse”), German Low German Rille, Rill (“a small channel; brook; furrow”), German Rille (“a groove; furrow”).
Forms
Derived
Verb
- To trickle, pour, or run like a small stream.
- And fainter, finer, trickle far To where the listening uplands are; To pause—then from his gurgling bill Let the warbled sweetness rill, And down the welkin, gushing free, Hark the molten melody; - 1862, Gerard Manley...
- Alladad Khan was panting hard, soaked in sweat, and his rolled-up sleeve was all blood, blood rilling down his arm. - 1956, Anthony Burgess, Time for a Tiger (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 158: