cowl
noun
- hood-shaped device used on a kiln, oast, or mill to keep the weather out and induce a flow of air
- hood-shaped covering used for a chimney
verb
No English definition recorded for this entry.
L331287 on Wikidata ↗Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /kaʊl/ / /kəʉl/
adj
Etymology: Borrowed from Ulster Scots coul, from Middle English cold.
- cold
“An' bitther cowl; an' min' ye I had play,”
noun
Etymology: See caul, probably altered due to semantic association (“something covering the head”).
- A caul (the amnion which encloses the foetus before birth, especially that part of it which sometimes shrouds a baby’s head at birth).
“According to one of his accounts—and his accounts varied with his audience—he was the seventh son of a seventh son, and born with a cowl on his face […]”
“1982, André Brink, A Chain of Voices, New York: William Morrow, Part 3, “Campher,” p. 331, […] I’d been born with a cowl, which from my earliest age prompted a wide variety of predictions about my future, alternately dire and enthusiastic.”
verb
Etymology: From Middle English coule, from Old English cūle, from earlier cugele (“hood, cowl”), from Ecclesiastical Latin cuculla (“monk's cowl”), from Latin cucullus (“hood”), of uncertain origin. Doublet of cagoule.
- To cover with, or as if with, a cowl (hood).
“Why cowl thy face beneath the Mourner’s hood,”
“But he by wild and way […] Rode till the star above the wakening sun, Beside that tower where Percivale was cowl’d [i.e. became a monk], Glanced from the rosy forehead of the dawn.”
- To wrap or form (something made of fabric) like a cowl.
“When he came downstairs from the bar with the whiskies, she had found a sweater for herself and had cowled a thick raincoat over Sligo.”
“As the evenings got colder, he used to reach up and pull down the green baize cloth, and cowl it around himself and wear it like a kind of igloo.”
- To make a monk of (a person).
- To scrape together
“COWL, scrape together. "Cowlin t'cinders up."”