Difference between revisions of "Fell (meanings)"
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*As a [[noun]], a '''fell''' can be: | *As a [[noun]], a '''fell''' can be: | ||
**a technical term in farming and leather-working, meaning the skin of an animal, with the hair still on it. In some historical uses in the wool trade, it was separate from the fleece; | **a technical term in farming and leather-working, meaning the skin of an animal, with the hair still on it. In some historical uses in the wool trade, it was separate from the fleece; | ||
− | ** | + | **in the North of England and, less, in Southern Scotland, a '''fell''' is a kind of moor: a rough pasture/wasteland on high ground, or a flattish hill (without a clear peak), or high slope, usually covered with rough wild grasses, bracken or heather. |
− | **There is a rare [[noun]] meaning 'bitterness', | + | **There is a rare [[noun]] meaning 'bitterness', probably derived from the [[Latin]] for gall. |
**In forestry, a '''fell''' is a [[collective noun]] naming all the trees '''felled''' in a single process of '''felling'''. | **In forestry, a '''fell''' is a [[collective noun]] naming all the trees '''felled''' in a single process of '''felling'''. | ||
::Other technical meanings of '''fell''' exist in mining and in printing. | ::Other technical meanings of '''fell''' exist in mining and in printing. |
Revision as of 09:03, 15 August 2018
Several words are written fell - they are homonyms. There are two verbal uses, several nouns, and an adjective.
- As verbal forms,
- The transitive lexical verb 'to fell' means 'to make [someone or something] fall'. In Present Day English, it is mostly used of trees: one might fell an oak because it is diseased, or to obtain the timber. It is also still used to mean 'to knock [a person] down', as in 'David felled Goliath with a slingshot'; in the past, it was also used of demolishing buildings, humiliating people and tripping people up. The past forms are felled, and the -ing participle is felling. The agent noun is feller, as in tree-feller.
- Fell is also the past tense of the intransitive verb 'to fall': "Rain is falling today; rain fell yesterday." (The past participle is fallen.) See also fall (irregular verb)
- As a noun, a fell can be:
- a technical term in farming and leather-working, meaning the skin of an animal, with the hair still on it. In some historical uses in the wool trade, it was separate from the fleece;
- in the North of England and, less, in Southern Scotland, a fell is a kind of moor: a rough pasture/wasteland on high ground, or a flattish hill (without a clear peak), or high slope, usually covered with rough wild grasses, bracken or heather.
- There is a rare noun meaning 'bitterness', probably derived from the Latin for gall.
- In forestry, a fell is a collective noun naming all the trees felled in a single process of felling.
- Other technical meanings of fell exist in mining and in printing.
- The adjective, and a derivative adverb, fell means 'cruel[ly]', 'deadly', 'terrible/terribly' or, in general, 'to be feared'. It is, says OED "Now only poet[ical] or rhetorical"; but you can still come across it in such contexts as
- Thomas Carlyle's translation of Luther's hymn Ein' Feste Burg, 'A Safe Stronghold our God is still', which contains the following lines about Satan:
- The ancient prince of hell
- Hath risen with purpose fell
- Shakespeare's horror at the homicidal thoroughness of Macbeth, whose slaughter of MacDuff's family provokes the latter to say
- All my pretty ones?
- Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
- What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
- At one fell swoop? (Macbeth IV iii 216ff), which has become a regular idiom; and Hamlet, sensing the approach of death, says to Horatio
- ... as this fell sergeant Death
- Is strict in his arrest
- (Shakespeare(1604) Hamlet V. ii. 288)
- W. E. Henley 1849-1903 in his poem Invictus (1888) on the dauntless spirit of man says
- In the fell clutch of circumstance,
- I have not winced nor cried aloud:
- Under the bludgeonings of chance
- My head is bloody, but unbowed.
- You may want to consult Feeling - felling.