I put a spell on you...

[venta]

Gosh. It's ages since we've had one of these. Words I use which no one else knows...

[Poll #1724258]

A perfectly respectable definition can be found here.

[Poll #1724259]

Edit: supplementary question. If it didn't mean what you thought, what did you think it meant?

Comments

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

That's like a little spill? I've never really met "spill" in that sense outside the school chemistry lab.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Presumably - I only know it as a parlour game (the same as Jackstraws, or Pick-up-Sticks).

We had spills at home for fire lighting and such - though they lived next to the gas fire. Er... maybe there was a period when the ignition was busted or something? I have no idea.

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

Spills: thin strips of wood, about quarter inch wide and 6-8ins long, in various colours, kept in a spill jar in the hearth in the days of coal fires so that smokers could light cigarettes/pipes without striking a match. Also used to light candles/oil lamps/gas mantles (all of which we had when I was a tiddler).

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I guess so - I've also never really heard spill, in this context, outside a science lab, although I sometimes read it in historical novels where taper might do. But spillikins is what I called 'pick up sticks' for years until I heard it had another name. Dictionary seems to confirm that it's related to spilc.