spool

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A cylinder of wood, plastic, cardboard, or other material on which wire, thread, or string is wound.
• noun The amount of wire, thread, or string wound on such a cylinder.
• noun Something similar to such a cylinder in shape or function.
• noun A reel for magnetic tape.
• transitive & intransitive verb To wind or be wound on or off a spool.
• transitive & intransitive verb To store (data sent to a printer) in a buffer, allowing the program that sent the data to the printer to resume its normal operation.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A small cylinder of wood or other material (with a projecting disk at each end), upon which thread or yarn is wound; a reel.
• noun The revolving metal shaft of an anglers′ reel, upon which the fishing-line is wound. See cut under reel.
• noun In electricity, the reel or bobbin upon which a resistance coil, magnet coil, or sometimes the field coil of a generator or motor is wound.
• To wind on a spool.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun A piece of cane or reed with a knot at each end, or a hollow cylinder of wood with a ridge at each end, used to wind thread or yarn upon.
• noun an article holding spools of thread, turning on pins, -- used by women at their work.
• transitive verb To wind on a spool or spools.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A small swimming pool that can be used also as a spa.
• noun A device around which thread, wire or cable is wound, especially a cylinder or spindle.
• noun computing A temporary storage area for electronic mail, etc.
• verb To wind on a spool or spools.
• verb computing To send files to a device or a program (a spooler or a daemon that puts them in a queue for processing at a later time).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• verb transfer data intended for a peripheral device (usually a printer) into temporary storage
• verb wind onto a spool or a reel
• noun a winder around which thread or tape or film or other flexible materials can be wound