foal
UK /fəʊl/ · US /foʊl/ noun, verb
Forms foals foaling foaled foale fole
- noun A young horse or other equine, especially just after birth or less than a year old.
- noun (mining, historical) A young boy who assisted the headsman by pushing or pulling the tub.
- verb (ambitransitive) To give birth to (a foal); to bear offspring.
Etymology
From Middle English ffoole, foale, fole, fool, foole, fowle, from Old English fola, from Proto-West Germanic *folō, from Proto-Germanic *fulô (“foal”), from pre-Germanic *pl̥Hon-, from Proto-Indo-European *pōlH- (“animal young”).
Cognate with Saterland Frisian Foole (“foal”), West Frisian fôle (“foal”), Dutch veulen (“foal”), German Fohlen, Füllen (“foal”), Low German Fohl (“foal”), Vilamovian fyłn (“foal”), Danish føl (“foal”), Faroese fyl (“foal”), Icelandic foli, fyl (“foal”), Norwegian Bokmål fole, føll (“foal”), Norwegian Nynorsk fole, fyl, føl (“foal”), Swedish fåle, föl (“foal”); compare also Latin pullus (“young animal”), Greek πουλάρι (poulári, “foal”), Albanian pelë (“mare”), Armenian ուլ (ul, “kid, young of a goat”). Related to filly.
Webster’s 1913
- noun The young of any animal of the Horse family (Equidæ); a colt; a filly. Foal teeth (Zoöl.), the first set of teeth of a horse.
- verb To bring forth (a colt); --said of a mare or a she ass.
- verb To bring forth young, as an animal of the horse kind.
Etymology [OE. fole, AS. fola; akin to OHG. folo, G. fohlen, Goth. fula, Icel. foli, Sw Lfle, Gr., L. pullus a young animal. Cf. Filly, Poultry, Pullet.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “foal”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details