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bowler

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Etymology and origin of the English word bowler

Pronunciation

  • UK: /ˈbəʊ.lə/[1]
  • US: /ˈboʊ.lɚ/[1]

bowler1 player at bowls

Confidence
Established
Formation
Derivation
First attested
c. 1518 Cocke Lorelles Bote
Ultimate origin
Latin bulla
Etymology tree of bowler1
inherited borrowed derived
English bowl
English bowler

Etymology

The player is formed from English bowl + -er, from the verb meaning to roll a ball.[2][3][4][5] The verb comes from the noun meaning a ball, from Middle French boule (“ball”), from Latin bulla (“bubble, round swelling, knob”).[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

A person who plays at bowls: about 1518, in Cocke Lorelles Bote;[2][5] Etymonline gives about 1500, and Dictionary.com 1490–1500.[3][6]

Semantic evolution

Johnson (1755) knew only "he that plays at bowls".[7] The cricket sense, the player who delivers the ball to the batsman, is recorded from 1722, in the Weekly Journal,[2][4] and gave compounds such as fast bowler and slow bowler.[4] The word is also used of a player at tenpin bowling.[8]

Timeline

  • c. 1518 – a person who plays at bowls.[2][5]
  • 1722 – cricket, the player who bowls.[2]
  • 1755 – Johnson: "he that plays at bowls".[7]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A person who plays at bowls or bowling.[8][5][2]
  2. (cricket) The player who delivers the ball to the batsman: The bowler took three wickets before lunch.[5][2][4]

bowler2 hat

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Clipping, Eponym
First attested
1859 Western Daily Press (Bristol)
Ultimate origin
English bowler hat

Etymology

The hat is a clipping from English bowler hat,[2] named after William Bowler (1808–78) and his cousin Thomas Bowler (1826–93), hatmakers and makers of felt in London.[2] The OED records that William Bowler devised the hat for James Lock & Co. in answer to an order placed in 1849 by Edward Coke, son of the Earl of Leicester.[2] The Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English name William Bowler and date his design to 1850,[4][9] Collins and Hoad name John Bowler,[10][11] and Ayto and Merriam-Webster speak of a family of 19th-century hatters named Bowler.[12][13] Etymonline notes a John Bowler, hat manufacturer of Surrey, active from the 1820s to the 1840s, and a William Bowler of Southwark Bridge Road who sought a patent for improvements in hats in 1854, but thinks the word may simply come from bowl, comparing Old English heafodbolla (“brainpan, skull”).[3] Klein, Weekley and Dictionary.com also derive it from the vessel, Weekley comparing basinet.[14][15][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

A hard felt hat with a rounded crown: 1859, in the Western Daily Press of Bristol, and as bowler hat from 1852.[2] Ayto, Merriam-Webster and Etymonline date it from 1861, when the Saturday Review wrote of someone who "wore … a white bowler hat".[12][5][3]

Semantic evolution

Etymonline notes that the earliest printed examples have a lower-case b.[3] In American English the same hat is a derby.[10][16] After the First World War the bowler became a symbol of civilian life: from 1918 phrases such as to get one's bowler meant to be demobilized,[2][4] and the verb bowler-hat meant, from 1919, to dismiss someone from the services or from office.[2]

Timeline

  • 1849 – the order to James Lock & Co. for which the hat was devised.[2]
  • 1852 – bowler hat.[2]
  • 1859 – bowler, the hat.[2]
  • 1861 – "a white bowler hat", in the Saturday Review.[12][5]
  • 1918 – the bowler as a symbol of civilian life.[2]
  • 1919 – verb bowler-hat, to demobilize.[2]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A hard felt hat with a rounded crown and a narrow curled brim; called a derby in North America.[10][5][2][8]
  2. to get one's bowler (British slang, dated): to be released from the armed forces into civilian life.[4][2]

Word family

  • bowler hat
  • bowlered

Usage notes

Irish slang has a separate bowler, pronounced to rhyme with howler, for a dog, especially a mongrel; it is recorded from 1951 and is of uncertain origin, perhaps from a word for a dog's bark.[2][10][17] The OED also records an obsolete bowler, a drinking companion (1638), from the drinking bowl.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ 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
  3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  6. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  7. ^ 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.
  8. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  10. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  11. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  12. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  13. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  14. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  15. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  16. ^ Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  17. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Bowler.” Etymologically, 31 Oct. 2026, etymologically.com/en/bowler. Accessed 31 Oct. 2026.

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