The story
- Proto-Germanic · inherited from*fuglaz
- Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*fugl
- Old English · inherited fromfugol“bird”
- Middle English · inherited fromfoul
- English todayfowl
From Middle English foul, foghel, fowel, fowele, from Old English fugol (“bird”), from Proto-West Germanic *fugl, from Proto-Germanic *fuglaz, dissimilated variant of *fluglaz (compare Old English flugol ‘fleeing’, Mercian fluglas heofun ‘birds of the air’), from *fleuganą (“to fly”). Cognate with West Frisian fûgel, Low German Vagel, Dutch vogel, German Vogel, Swedish fågel, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk fugl. Doublet of voël. More at fly.
Words from the same roots
Old Englishfugol all →
FulmerFoulsham
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.