• enPR: bĕl, IPA: /bɛl/

From Middle English belle, from Old English belle, from Proto-Germanic *bellǭ.

bell (plural bells)

1. A percussive instrument made of metal or other hard material, typically but not always in the shape of an inverted cup with a flared rim, which resonates when struck.
   • 1848, Edgar Allan Poe, The Bells:

     HEAR the sledges with the bells —
     Silver bells!
     What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

2. An instrument that emits a ringing sound, situated on a bicycle's handlebar and used by the cyclist to warn of their presence.
3. The sounding of a bell as a signal.
4. (chiefly, British, informal) A telephone call.

   I’ll give you a bell later.

5. A signal at a school that tells the students when a class is starting or ending.
6. (music) The flared end of a brass or woodwind instrument.
7. (nautical) Any of a series of strokes on a bell (or similar), struck every half hour to indicate the time (within a four hour watch)
8. The flared end of a pipe, designed to mate with a narrow spigot.
9. (computing) The bell character.

   Synonyms: alert, beep, mul:\a

10. Anything shaped like a bell, such as the cup or corolla of a flower.
    • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC ↗, [Act V, scene i]:

      In a cowslip's bell I lie.

11. (architecture) The part of the capital of a column included between the abacus and neck molding; also used for the naked core of nearly cylindrical shape, assumed to exist within the leafage of a capital.
12. (Scotland, archaic) A bubble.
    • 1828, James Hogg, Mary Burnet:

      He swam to the place where Mary disappeared but there was neither boil nor gurgle on the water, nor even a bell of departing breath, to mark the place where his beloved had sunk.

13. (Britain, vulgar, slang) Clipping of bell-end

• (in heraldry) campane
• (rare) tintinnabule

• French: cloche
• German: Glocke
• Italian: campana
• Portuguese: sino (especially a big one), campainha (small)
• Russian: ко́локол
• Spanish: campana big, campanilla small

• French: sonnerie
• German: Klingeln
• Portuguese: badalada
• Russian: звон

• French: coup de fil
• German: Klingel
• Italian: chiamata, telefonata
• Portuguese: toque
• Russian: звоно́к

• French: sonnerie
• German: Klingel, Schelle
• Italian: campanella
• Portuguese: sinal, campainha
• Russian: звоно́к

• French: pavillon
• Russian: ра́струб
• Spanish: pabellón

• Russian: скля́нка

• French: sonnette
• Portuguese: campainha
• Russian: звонок

bell (bells, present participle belling; simple past and past participle belled)

1. (transitive) To attach a bell to.

   Who will bell the cat?

2. (transitive) To shape so that it flares out like a bell.

   to bell a tube

3. (slang, transitive) To telephone.
4. (intransitive) To develop bells or corollas; to take the form of a bell; to blossom.

   Hops bell.

• Russian: звони́ть

From Middle English bellen, from Old English bellan, from Proto-Germanic *bellaną, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel-.

bell (bells, present participle belling; simple past and past participle belled)

1. (intransitive) To bellow or roar.
   • 1894 May, Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, London, New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published June 1894, →OCLC ↗:

     As the dawn was breaking the Sambhur belled / Once, twice and again!

   • 1872, Robert Browning, Fifine at the Fair‎:

     You acted part so well, went alɬ-fours upon earth / The live-long day, brayed, belled.

2. (transitive) To utter in a loud manner; to thunder forth.
   • 1591, Edmund Spenser, Astrophel:

     Their leaders bell their bleating tunes In doleful sound.

bell (plural bells)

1. The bellow or bay of certain animals, such as a hound on the hunt or a stag in rut.

• IPA: /bɛl/

1. Surname of Scottish and northern English origin for a bell ringer, bellmaker, or from someone who lived "at the Bell (inn)."
2. The Bell telephone company (after Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone.)
3. A male given name.
4. A female given name; mostly used as a middle name in the 19th century.
   • 1857, Charles Dickens, chapter 1, in The Perils of Certain English Prisoners:

     […] I found that her Christian name was Isabella, which they shortened into Bell, and that the name of the deceased non-commissioned officer was Tott. Being the kind of neat little woman it was natural to make a toy of—I never saw a woman so like a toy in my life—she had got the plaything name of Belltott. In short, she had no other name on the island.

5. A number of places in USA:
   1. A city in Los Angeles County, California.
   2. A town in Gilchrist County, Florida.
   3. An ucomm in Logan County, Illinois.
   4. CDP in Adair County, Oklahoma.
   5. A town in Bayfield County, Wisconsin.
   6. Three townships in Pennsylvania.
6. A village in Eastern Cape, South Africa.
7. A village in the Blue Mountains.
8. A rural town in Western Downs.
9. A municipality in de:Mayen-Koblenz, Rhineland-Palatinate.
10. A municipality in de:Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis, Rhineland-Palatinate.

bell (plural bells)

1. (US, Canada) a telephone utility; a Baby Bell.