The word was first recorded in English around 1330, from French, in Robert Mannyng's poem, Chronicle, which described a nobleman stripping the armour from a fallen enemy.
Behind the French verb lay a Latin noun. That noun originally meant the hide or skin stripped from a dead animal.
Behind that Latin noun lay a Proto-Indo-European root, *spel-, meaning 'to split, or break off'. The same root gave Greek a word for flayed skin, and Sanskrit a verb meaning 'to split'.
SPOOL and SPILL share the same root, meaning 'to split, or break off'. SPOOL entered English in the fourteenth century, from Germanic, naming a bobbin around which thread is wound. SPILL is native to Old English, originally meant to destroy, or kill, this sense faded after 1600, changing to its modern meaning.
By the fifteenth century the word described the way to carve a roast hen. By 1694 its meaning shifted, describing a child raised with too much. Today, the word is also used to describe the act of giving away a movie ending or puzzle answer, too soon.
