coll

present singular third person colls · participle present colling · participle past colled · past colled

1. ambitransitiveTo hug or embrace.

   They kissed and colled in parks and fields and, better, a / Warm bed, her own.

   1995, Anthony Burgess, Byrne

   3 more examples

   So hauing ſayd, her twixt her armes twaine / Shee ſtreightly ſtraynd, and colled tenderly

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 420

   "As how, my lambkin," blushing, she replide, / "Because I in this dancing schoole abide? / If that it be, that breede's this discontent, / We will remoue the camp incontinent: / For shelter onelie, sweete heart, came I hither, / And to auoide the troblous stormie weather; / But now the coaste is cleare, we will be gonne, / Since, but thy self, true louer I haue none." / With that she sprung full lightlie to my lips / And fast about the neck me colle's, and clips ...

   1593, Thomas Nashe, The Choice of Valentines

   'You couldn't expect her to throw her arms round 'ee, an' to kiss and to coll 'ee all at once.'

   1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, volume 1, London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., page 82

1. An island of the Inner Hebrides in Argyll and Bute council area, Scotland, United Kingdom.

plural Colls

1. A diminutive of the male given name Nicholas, of rare usage. A medieval English short form of the male given name Nicholas; very rare today.
2. A surname originating as a patronymic.