conoille
.
Searchable Lemmata: conoille (AF).
Alternate Forms: conoil, conoile, conoilie, conil, conile, conilie, conille, conule, cunoil, cunoile, cunul, cunnille, cunnuille, conoylie.
Definitions and Defining Citations:
1(n.)
Manufacture;
distaff.(ante 1300 - circa 1315)
1. [15] ... colus: conil, anglice rock ... [16] ... pelex: gallice rivayl, rivayle, gallice helye ... mustela: wesel, belet ... [18] ... bever, hoc luter: hoter, a broc ... vibra: tumberel vel bray, anglice brake
Gloss.
[AND TLL (ii 15-18) ante 1300]
2. (when they leave paradise, the angel gives to Adam and Eve:) robe pur lour membres moscer E beche e conoylie e fisyle a filer
Biblical/Hagiographic.
[AND Qu Mary’s Ps (4r) 1310/1320]
Sex: Male, Female Use: Secular Ceremonial: No
Body Parts: N/A.
Etymological Evidence:
Definite, French, from vulgar Latin conucula, var. of colucula, a diminutive of colus 'distaff'. Etymologically the word has the same relationship to colus as rocket (see rocket 2) has to rock, with the rock being the distaff holding the fibres and the rocket the spindle onto which the thread wound. This may have been the original sense of conoille, but its systematic equation in glossarial sources with Middle English rock suggests that in Anglo-French it had the meaning 'distaff'.
WF: Borrowed into the British Isles
Etym Cog:
References:
