Coll
name, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To hug or embrace. ambitransitive
"So hauing ſayd, her twixt her armes twaine / Shee ſtreightly ſtraynd, and colled tenderly"
- 1 A medieval English short form of the male given name Nicholas; very rare today.
- 2 A surname originating as a patronymic.
- 3 An island of the Inner Hebrides in Argyll and Bute council area, Scotland.
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Take, for example, the French word collège. In English, college can often be used in place of the word university, or sometimes as a school within a university. However, in French, collège actually means “middle school,” or the level of schooling for students in grades five or six through eight."
Etymology
From Middle English collen, from Old French coler, acoler (“accoll, throw arms round neck of”); ultimately from Latin ad + collum (“neck”).
Uncertain. The island name, from Latin Colosus (704 AD), is often associated with an Old Irish *koll or Proto-Brythonic *koll, themselves both from Proto-Celtic *koslos (“hazel”). Derivation from Ancient Greek κολοσσός (kolossós, “giant figure”) has been called "naïve" by Coates (2006).
Related phrases
More for "coll"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.