coulter

Forms

• colter (US)

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English culter, also cultour and colter,^[2] inherited from Old English culter,^[3][4][5] borrowed from Latin culter (“knife, ploughshare”),^[4][6][3][7] and the American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster Unabridged add a second source in Old French coltre, from the same Latin word.^[3][5] Etymonline traces the Latin noun to Proto-Indo-European *skel- (“to cut”),^[6] and de Vaan, more cautiously, reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *(s)kolh₂/₃-tro- (“instrument for cleaving”), if it does belong to a root meaning to split.^[8] Merriam-Webster Unabridged compares Old High German scala (“husk”), Old Norse skilja (“to separate”), Ancient Greek σκαλίς (skalís, “hoe, mattock”) and Lithuanian skélti (“to split”).^[5] The Latin noun is also the source of cutler,^[9] and its diminutive cultellus (“small knife”) of cutlass.^[9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The iron blade fixed in front of the share of a plough: about 1000, in the 1989 edition of the OED, which also records the word before 1000 for a knife, apparently a Latinism.^[11] A monastic colloquy in Old English asks where the ploughman would get his coulter if not by the speaker's craft.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The word stayed tied to the plough, with the Latin sense "knife" surviving only marginally in Old and Middle English, and Old English glossaries also use it for a dagger.^[11][2][12] Chaucer has the form kultour four times.^[13][14] Onions notes that the spelling culter is familiar from Shakespeare's Henry V.^[15] Johnson (1755) quotes 1 Samuel for the blade, which he defined as cutting the earth perpendicular to the share.^[16] It stayed in general dialect use across Scotland, Ireland and England in forms such as cooter, coother and couter,^[17] and in Aberdeenshire it could also mean a nose, while Lakeland cooter-snoot was a long nose.^[17] From its bill the puffin was called coulterneb in dialect.^[18]

Timeline

• c. 1000 – the blade of a plough.^[11] A knife is recorded slightly earlier, before 1000.^[11]
• before 1325 – Middle English koltre, culter, glossing a French word in a Bibbesworth manuscript.^[2]
• 1360 – cultres in an inventory, with other farm gear.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A blade or sharp-edged disc on the beam of a plough that cuts the soil vertically ahead of the ploughshare: The farmer sharpened the coulter before spring ploughing.^[19][5][18]
2. The part of a seed drill that makes the furrow for the seed.^[1]
3. (obsolete) A knife.^[11][2]

Related words

• cutlass
• cutler
• cutlery
• shell

Usage notes

Merriam-Webster Unabridged enters the word under colter, with coulter as the less common spelling.^[5] Onions and the Shorter Oxford note colter as the American form, and Collins marks it as chiefly American.^[15][18][19] The surname Coulter is separate: Etymonline takes it as probably from a place in Lancashire,^[6] and E. C. Smith as a colt-herd.^[20]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c d e Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ a b Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
13. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
14. ^ Skeat, W. W., ed. (1894), The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, vol. VI: Glossarial Index, Oxford: Clarendon Press
15. ^ a b Onions, C. T., ed. (1966), The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
16. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
17. ^ 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)
18. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
19. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
20. ^ Smith, Elsdon C. (1973), New Dictionary of American Family Names, New York: Harper & Row