stell

present singular third person stells · participle present stelling · participle past stelled · past stelled · participle past stold · past stold

1. ScotlandUKdialectaltransitiveTo place in position; set up, fix, plant; prop, mount.

   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.

   1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide

2. obsoletetransitiveTo portray; delineate; display.

   To this well-painted piece is Lucrece come, To find a face where all distress is stelled.

   1594, William Shakespeare, Lucrece (First Quarto), London: […] Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, […], →OCLC, lines 1443–44

   1 more example

   Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath stell'd Thy beauty's form in table of my heart […]

   1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 24”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC

plural stells

1. archaicA place; station.
2. A stall; a fold for cattle.
3. ScotlandA prop; a support, as for the feet in standing or climbing.
4. ScotlandA still.

   The English stell we could disdain, Secure in valour's station; But English gold has been our bane— Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

   1791, Robert Burns, Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation

   1 more example

   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!

   1786, Robert Burns, The Author's Earnest Cry And Prayer

1. A surname.

1. informalA diminutive of the female given name Stella.