dæla
nafnorðkvenkyn
u, f.
I. a small dale, Sturl. ii. 100 (Ed.)
II. a naut. term, a contrivance to serve the purpose of a ship’s pump, Edda (Gl.); hence dælu-austr, m. emptying a ship by a dæla, Fbr. 131, Grett. 95; dælu-ker, n. a kind of bucket: hann hað þrælinn færa sér í d. þat er hann kaliaði sjó, Landu. 251; hence the metaph. phrase, láta dæluna ganga, to pour out incessantly, chatter without ceasing, Grett. 98. The ancients cannot well have known the pump; but as dælu-austr is distinguished from byttu-austr, where the buckets were handed up, so dæla seems to have been a kind of groove through which the bilge water was made to run out into the sea instead of emptying every bucket by handing it overboard: in Norse döla means a groove-formed trough, eaves, a trench, and the like, D. N. iv. 751, Ivar Aasen s. v. dæla, p. 75.