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reel

verb/riːl/

B2CEFR level
35/100Rarity: fairly common
NeutralRegister

To stagger or sway violently as though about to lose one's footing.

He reeled backwards from the blow and crashed into the railings.

Similar: stagger, lurch, totter

Origin: Middle English, perhaps from 'reel' (a spinning device).

Topic: staggering in General English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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