dell en · NOUN · etymology 1
Pronunciation
- (Southern-England) audio
- /dɛl/
- dĕl
Etymology
From Middle English delle, del, from Old English dell (“small dale”), from Proto-West Germanic *dalljā, from Proto-Germanic *daljō. Cognate to Proto-Slavic *dolъ (“below, down; valley, pit”), Welsh dôl (“meadow, dale”) and English dale.
Meanings
-
A small, deep, and wooded valley or sunken area of ground, especially in the form of a natural hollow.
In dells and dales, conceal'd from human sight.
1722, Thomas Tickell, Kensington Gardens:To this day they dwell In a lonely dell.
1794, William Blake, The Little Girl Found, lines 49-50My very photogenic died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.
1955, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, published August 1958, →OCLC:Already the shrill lark is out of sight, Flooding with waves of song this silent dell, ---Ah! there is something more in that bird's flight Than could be tested in a crucible!--- But the air freshens, let us go, why soon The woodmen will be here; how we have lived this night of June![...]
a. 1881, Oscar Wilde, 'The Garden of Eros', in Poems:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| dells | Number=Plur | lexicographic |
Deriveds
Hazel Dell · Dell Prairie · farmer in the dell · Fairy Dell · up hill and down dell
Synonyms
Translations (8)
ga fothair (sunken area of ground) · is laut (sunken area of ground) · nl inzinking (sunken area of ground) · hu völgy (sunken area of ground) · de Senke (sunken area of ground) · es depresión (sunken area of ground) · cs (zalesněné) údolíčko (sunken area of ground) · sv svacka (sunken area of ground)