Unspool

verb, slang

verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To remove (film, cotton, etc.) from a spool; unwind.

    "Next, unspool twenty cubits of the thin silver wire thread and cut this length in half. If you have less than twenty cubits, unspool all you have, and cut it in two equal parts."

  2. 2
    To reduce the thrust of a jet engine to idle in flight.

    "During this 14-second period, the airplane accelerated to about 173 KIAS, and the first officer retarded the throttles. By 1805:15, despite the instructions in the Delta L-1011 Pilot Operating Manual (POM), which states, “do not unspool the engines,” all three engines were either at, or very near, flight idle EPR and remained at that thrust level until 1805:22."

  3. 3
    To play; to be screened. slang

    "Let all the films of Keaton and Wenders unspool blackly across your mind like the negative of the white line still unspooling down a road in God's imagination, long after the end of his road movie of the end of the world."

  4. 4
    To flow forth, unfold, or play out. ambitransitive

    "The landscape and the living figures of that summer, as in some umber-smeared snapshot found in the brittle black pages of an old album, had become more dusty and indistinct as time for me unspooled with negligent haste into my own middle age, yet that summer's agony still cried out for explanation."

  5. 5
    To lose or cause to lose one's composure; to fall apart. ambitransitive

    "Normally, the worse a situation got, the calmer and more efficient Kelly became. But not this time. This was so bizarre, her mind unspooled."

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  1. 6
    To relax or become relaxed; to unwind. ambitransitive

    "After that, he felt exhausted — but unspooled inside — and drove to his Wilshire Boulevard home."

Example

More examples

"Next, unspool twenty cubits of the thin silver wire thread and cut this length in half. If you have less than twenty cubits, unspool all you have, and cut it in two equal parts."

Etymology

From un- + spool.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.