Stell
name, noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A place; station. archaic
- 2 A stall; a fold for cattle.
- 3 A prop; a support, as for the feet in standing or climbing. Scotland
- 4 A still. Scotland
"Paint Scotland greetin owre her thrissle; Her mutchkin stowp as toom's a whissle; An' damn'd excisemen in a bussle, Seizin a stell, Triumphant crushin't like a mussel, Or limpet shell!"
- 1 To place in position; set up, fix, plant; prop, mount. Scotland, UK, dialectal, transitive
"How he escaped a broken neck in that dreadful place no human being will ever ken. The sweat, he has told me, stood in cold drops upon his forehead; he scarcely was aware of the saddle in which he sat, and his eyes were stelled in his head so that he saw nothing but the sky ayont him."
- 2 To portray; delineate; display. obsolete, transitive
"To this well-painted piece is Lucrece come, To find a face where all distress is stelled."
- 1 A surname.
- 2 A diminutive of the female given name Stella. informal
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"How he escaped a broken neck in that dreadful place no human being will ever ken. The sweat, he has told me, stood in cold drops upon his forehead; he scarcely was aware of the saddle in which he sat, and his eyes were stelled in his head so that he saw nothing but the sky ayont him."
Etymology
From Middle English stellen, from Old English stellan (“to give a place to, set, place”), from Proto-West Germanic *stalljan (“to put, position”), from Proto-Indo-European *stel- (“to place, put, post, stand”). Cognate with Dutch stellen (“to set, put”), dated Low German stellen (“to put, place, fix”), German stellen (“to set, place, provide”), Old English steall (“position, place”). More at stall.
Alteration of stall, after the verb to stell.
From stell ("prop") or stell ("place")?
Related phrases
More for "stell"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.