rill

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Pronunciation

• IPA: /ɹɪl/

Noun

rill (plural rills)

1. A very small brook; a streamlet.
   • 1751 Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard:

     ...nor yet beside the rill,

     Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he

   • 1797, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan:

     So twice five miles of fertile ground

     With walls and towers were girdled round:

     And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

     Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

     And here were forests ancient as the hills,

     Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

2. (planetology) Alternative form of rille.

Translations

• French: ruisselet
• Russian: ручеёк
• Spanish: arroyito

Verb

rill (rills, present participle rilling; past and past participle rilled)

1. To trickle, pour, or run like a small stream.
   • 1862, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Il Mystico, 81-86:

     And fainter, finer, trickle far

     To where the listening uplands are;

     To pause—then from his gurgling bill

     Let the warbled sweetness rill,

     And down the welkin, gushing free,

     Hark the molten melody;

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