Also 6 Sc. spyl-. [app. an alteration of PILE sb.1 after prec. or by wrong analysis of combs.]
1. = PILE sb.1 3.
1513. Douglas, Æneid, IX. x. 20. Aschame ȝe nocht … To be inclosit amyd a fald of stakis, And be assegit … With akyn spyllis and dikis on syk wys?
1614. in Trans. Cumbld. & Westmoreld. Antiq. & Archæol. Soc. (1912), 244. [Some of the] spiles [which had been placed at the king’s charges for defence of the sea].
1829. [see SPILE v.3].
1851. H. Melville, Moby-Dick, ix. 47. Another runs to read the bill that’s stuck against the spile upon the wharf.
1856. Olmsted, Slave States, 353. A spile, pointed with iron, six inches in diameter, and twenty feet long, is set upon the stump by a diver. Ibid. In very large stumps, the spile is often driven till its top reaches the water.
1878. N. H. Bishop, Voy. Paper Canoe, 115. The government is building a remarkable pier of solid iron spiles, three abreast.
b. (See quot.)
a. 1825. Forby, Voc. E. Anglia, Spile,… a wedge of wood stoutly pointed with iron, used in clay or gravel pits, limestone quarries, &c., to let down large quantities at once.
c. Mining. A sharp-pointed post used in sinking by means of cribs.
1841. Civil Eng. & Arch. Jrnl., IV. 293/1. Supposing … the sand five fathoms … in depth,… and the length of the spiles six feet. Ibid. The five rounds of spiles and cribs … will take up 10 feet of the diameter of the pit.
1883. Gresley, Gloss. Coal-mining, 231. Spiles.… Narrow-pointed tubbing wedges.
d. attrib. and Comb., as spile-driver, -pier, -worm.
1894. Harper’s Mag., Jan., 422/1. The operation of a spile-driver at Plymouth docks.
1895. Funk’s Stand. Dict., Spile-worm, a ship-worm; teredo.
1898. Kipling, Day’s Work, 2. An overhead-crane travelled to and fro along its spile-pier.
† 2. = PILE sb.1 2 b. Obs.–1
1649. J. Ellistone, trans. Boehme’s Epist., xv. 133–4. Yet what God will, be done; as many a spile of Grasse perisheth when the Heaven giveth not its raine.
