bellows

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English belwes, the plural of belu, also belw,^[2][3] a northern form beside beli.^[2][3] It probably continues inherited from Old English belga, plural of belg or belig (“bag”),^[4][5][6][7] so that it is the same word as belly.^[3][7][2][8] In Old English the device was called blǣstbelig (“blowing bag”), and the simple noun is a shortening of this compound;^[4][6][7][5] compare Old Norse blástrbelgr and German Blasebalg.^[3][4][2] The Old English noun comes from Proto-Germanic *balgiz (“bag”),^[7][9] the source also of Gothic 𐌱𐌰𐌻𐌲𐍃 (balgs, “leather bag”) and belgr (“skin, skin bag, bellows”),^[9][10] which goes back to Proto-Indo-European *bhelgh- (“to swell”).^[2][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

An instrument for blowing a fire: the OED's Old English evidence starts in the Épinal–Erfurt glosses, and the simple noun has this sense in glossaries of the 11th century.^[3] Barnhart finds the plural beliges about 1125 and belowes in 1372–74,^[11] and Etymonline dates belwes to about 1200.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The singular bely still meant a bellows in Chaucer, but after 1400 it meant only "belly", while the plural belies kept the sense "bellows" in literature until the late 16th century.^[3] Wycliffe has the form belu, of northern or north Midland origin, and its plural belwes, bellows, became the literary form in the 16th century, leaving bellies as the plural of belly alone.^[3] Etymonline suggests that the word came to be used only in the plural because the instrument has two handles or halves.^[2] Johnson (1755) said that it had no singular, since one says "a pair of bellows", though Dryden used it as a singular.^[12] It has often been treated as a singular, and dialects have a double plural bellowses, as with gallows.^[3][13] Figurative uses began early: Chaucer used it of what fans the fire of passion.^[3] From 1614 it meant the lungs,^[3][14] a sense mainly American in the 20th century.^[14] It was applied to the air supply of an organ from 1542 and to the folding part of a camera from 1884.^[3] The verb bellows, to blow, was used from 1605 to 1748.^[3][4] In Yorkshire and southern dialects it also meant to breathe hard or be out of breath.^[13]

Timeline

• 11th century – Old English belg for a bellows, in glossaries.^[3]
• c. 1125 – the plural beliges.^[11]
• c. 1200 – belwes.^[2]
• c. 1386 – figurative, what fans the fire of passion, in Chaucer's Parson's Tale.^[3]
• 1542 – the bellows of an organ.^[3]
• 1605 – verb, to blow with bellows (obsolete by 1748).^[3][4]
• 1614 – figurative, the lungs.^[3][14]
• 1884 – the folding part of a camera.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A device with an air chamber whose flexible sides are pressed together to drive a stream of air through a narrow outlet, used especially to make a fire burn: He worked the bellows until the coals glowed red.^[15][16][3]
2. A similar device that supplies air to an organ, accordion or concertina.^[15][3]
3. The folding, light-tight sleeve between the lens and the body of some cameras.^[15][3]
4. A flexible, corrugated part of a pipe or machine that allows for expansion.^[15]
5. (informal) The lungs.^[16][14][3]

Word family

• bellowslike

Related words

• belly
• blow
• billow
• bolster

Usage notes

The noun is used with either a singular or a plural verb, and a single device is often called a pair of bellows.^[15][12][3]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
12. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
14. ^ a b c d Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
15. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
16. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster