What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Spill vs Spray - What's the difference?

spill | spray |

As nouns the difference between spill and spray

is that spill is game, activity while spray is spray.

spill

English

Verb

  • To drop something so that it spreads out or makes a mess; to pour.
    • I spilled some sticky juice on the kitchen floor.
  • To spread out or fall out, as above.
    • Some sticky juice spilled onto the kitchen floor.
  • * Isaac Watts
    • He was so topful of himself, that he let it spill on all the company.
  • To drop something that was intended to be caught.
  • * {{quote-news
    • , year=2011 , date=October 29 , author=Neil Johnston , title=Norwich 3 - 3 Blackburn , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=That should have been that, but Hart caught a dose of the Hennessey wobbles and spilled Adlene Guedioura's long-range shot.}}
  • To mar; to damage; to destroy by misuse; to waste.
  • * Puttenham
    • They [the colours] disfigure the stuff and spill the whole workmanship.
  • * Fuller
    • Spill not the morning, the quintessence of day, in recreations.
  • (obsolete) To be destroyed, ruined, or wasted; to come to ruin; to perish; to waste.
  • * Chaucer
    • That thou wilt suffer innocents to spill .
  • To cause to flow out and be lost or wasted; to shed.
  • * Dryden
    • to revenge his blood so justly spilt
  • To cover or decorate with slender pieces of wood, metal, ivory, etc.; to inlay.
    • (Spenser)
  • (nautical) To relieve a sail from the pressure of the wind, so that it can be more easily reefed or furled, or to lessen the strain.

    • Derived terms

    * spiller * spill blood * spill one's seed * spill out * spill over * spill the beans

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (countable) A mess of something that has been dropped.
  • A fall or stumble.
    • The bruise is from a bad spill he had last week.
  • A small stick or piece of paper used to light a candle, cigarette etc by the transfer of a flame from a fire.
  • * 2008 , Elizabeth Bear, Ink and Steel: A Novel of the Promethean Age :
    • Kit froze with the pipe between his teeth, the relit spill pressed to the weed within it.
  • A slender piece of anything.
  • # A peg or pin for plugging a hole, as in a cask; a spile.
  • # A metallic rod or pin.
  • (mining) One of the thick laths or poles driven horizontally ahead of the main timbering in advancing a level in loose ground.
  • The situation where sound is picked up by a microphone from a source other than that which is intended.
  • (obsolete) A small sum of money.
    • (Ayliffe)
  • (Australia, politics) A declaration that the leadership of a parliamentary party is vacant, and open for re-election. Short form of (l)

    • Quotations

    * (English Citations of "spill")

    Derived terms

    * spill one's seed * spillway * take a spill

    Anagrams

    * English ergative verbs ---- ==Norwegian Bokmål==

    Alternative forms

    * (l)

    Noun

  • game, play

    • Inflection

    Derived terms

    * (l) * (l) * (l)

    Verb

    (head)

    • See also

    * (spel) ----

    spray

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A fine, gentle, dispersed mist of liquid.
    • The sailor could feel the spray from the waves.
  • A small branch of flowers or berries.
    • The bridesmaid carried a spray of lily-of-the-valley.
  • * Dryden
    • The painted birds, companions of the spring, / Hopping from spray to spray, were heard to sing.
  • A collective body of small branches.
    • The tree has a beautiful spray .
  • * Spenser
    • And from the trees did lop the needless spray .
  • A pressurized container; an atomizer.
  • Any of numerous commercial products, including paints, cosmetics, and insecticides, that are dispensed from containers in this manner.
  • (medicine) A jet of fine medicated vapour, used either as an application to a diseased part or to charge the air of a room with a disinfectant or a deodorizer.
  • (metalworking) A side channel or branch of the runner of a flask, made to distribute the metal to all parts of the mold.
  • (metalworking) A group of castings made in the same mold and connected by sprues formed in the runner and its branches.
    • (Knight)

    Derived terms

    * body spray * bug spray * capiscum spray * cooking spray * feather spray * fly spray * hair spray * pepper spray * spray bottle * spray can * spray condenser * spray drain * spray gun * spray paint * vanishing spray

    Verb

  • To project a liquid in a dispersive manner.
  • (figurative) To project many small items dispersively.
  • *{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-14, author=(Jonathan Freedland)
    • , volume=189, issue=1, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Obama's once hip brand is now tainted , passage=Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.}}
  • To allocate blocks of memory from (a heap, etc.), and fill them with the same byte sequence, hoping to establish that sequence in a certain predetermined location as part of an exploit.
    • to spray the heap of a target process

    Derived terms

    * * sprayable

    Anagrams

    * prays, raspy ----