What exactly is a spell?

What exactly is a spell?

>What exactly is spelling?
Fixed, and it's the process or activity of writing or naming the letters of a word. Next we define grammar.

A series of actions with a specific supernatural effect

Fragments of the Song of Creation that gave birth to the universe, which hold the same power to shape the world to the reciter's desires.

Manipulation of physics through force of will.

Cambridge English Dictionary
>Spoken words that are thought to have magical power, or (the condition of being under) the influence or control of such words

Oxford Dictionary
>A form of words used as a magical charm or incantation.

Merriam-Webster
>A spoken word or form of words held to have magic power

A secret that breaks the rules of reality in an effort to define itself.

>old codger in town tells you to "sit for a spell"
So what kind of game is he playing at here?

It's a ritual with somatic components, just happens to involve sitting.

The culmination of words, intent, and the correct conditions.

Reality hacking.

A miserable pile of incantations.

A small man who lives just outside of reality usually, and who you can coax into your head to pull the strings of reality for you in a certain way

An extradimensional energy worm that lives in your brain. Repeatedly hosting spells causes brain damage and insanity.

A story, a retelling of a historical event that shaped history and the world.

Effectively a way to run metaphysical scripts or program aspects of reality to produce a desired outcome or function.

Cheating

Fighter detected.

A loophole in the laws of reality that can be reliably exploited by a sufficiently powerful or educated individual.

A series of memetic actions that are able to resonate with the 2D Planck scale substructure of a given universe in such a way as to alter the 3D projection it generates (aka 'reality').

The changes seem inexplicable when viewed from a 3D perspective, but the rules governing them on the 2D plane are on the same level advanced university mathematics and thus those in the know can teach them to others with a high enough intelligence to grasp them.

What about sorcerers?

This is the only acceptable answer.

idiot savants

A harnessed manifestation of ethereality to create an impossibility within a state of reality; to create possibility from impossibility; to make the impossible merely improbable; to use an undefined/unwritten rule within the defined rules of reality.

Gambling with the dead, sleeping god at the center of the world. Stake lifespan against the spell effects.