Etymologically
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bowler

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Pronunciation

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

bowler1 player at bowls

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

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