Dictionaries › English

dwell

Pronunciation: /dwɛl/

The English word “dwell” has 8 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A period of time in which a system or component remains in a given state.
  2. A brief pause in the motion of part of a mechanism to allow an operation to be completed.
  3. A planned delay in a timed control program.
  4. In a petrol engine, the period of time the ignition points are closed to let current flow through the ignition coil in between each spark. This is measured as an angle in degrees around the camshaft in the distributor which controls the points, for example in a 4-cylinder engine it might be 55° (spark at 90° intervals, points closed for 55° between each).

verb

  1. To live; to reside.
  2. To linger (on); to remain fixated.
  3. To be in a given state.
  4. To abide; to remain; to continue.

Etymology

From Middle English dwellen (“delay, live, remain, persist”), from Old English dwellan (“to mislead, deceive; be led into error, stray”), from Proto-Germanic *dwaljaną (“to hold up, delay; hesitate”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰwelH- (“to whirl, swirl, blur, obfuscate”), which is cognate with Old Norse dvelja and related to Proto-Germanic *dwelaną (“to go astray”), which underwent semantic…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “dwell” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.