The story
- Proto-Indo-European · inherited from*pōlH-“animal young”
- Proto-Germanic · inherited from*fulô“foal”
- Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*folō
- Old English · inherited fromfola
- Middle English · inherited fromffoole
- English todayfoal
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”). Cognates 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.
Words from the same roots
Proto-Indo-European*pōlH- all →
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.