boule

plural boules

1. One of the bowls used in the French game of boules.

   Wani had been wet about the game until he turned out to be good at it, and now he was absorbed and unironical, tripping after the ball, yapping and grinning when he bombed the other boules away from the jack-ball, or cochonnet.

   2004, Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty […], London: Picador, →ISBN

2. A single-crystal ingot produced by synthetic means.
3. A round loaf of bread.
4. A round piece of dough.
5. artsA through-sawn log with the slices restacked in the order and orientation they originally had in the log, usually with waney edges.

   A live-sawn log kept as a unit is known as a boule

   1991 August, American Woodworker, number 21, page 47

   3 more examples

   Behind him is lumber 'sawn in the boule.' Wood is more commonly sawn in this manner in Europe and is stacked in the order it comes from the log.

   1986, Fine woodworking on wood and how to dry it, page 42

   Specialty lumber dealers can cut and sticker a log "in the boule," so that boards hold the same relative position they had before milling

   1995 August, American Woodworker, number 46, page 41

   IN THE BOULE. If you work with whole logs, allocate enough space for storing flitch-cut planks in the order they were sawn. Their sheer bulk helps keep them flat, and stacking in order makes sequential matching for color and grain much easier

   2005, Andy Rae, Workshop Idea Book, page 94

present singular third person boules · participle present bouling · participle past bouled · past bouled

1. nonstandardraretransitivecookingTo shape (a piece of dough) into a ball.

plural boules

1. alternativeuncountableusuallyartsAlternative form of buhl.

plural boules

1. historicalA council of citizens in Ancient Greece