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cull

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Etymology and origin of the English word cull

Pronunciation

cull1 to pick, select

Confidence
Established
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
c. 1225
Borrowed from
Old French cuillir via Middle English
Ultimate origin
Latin colligō
Etymology tree of cull1
inherited borrowed derived
Latin lēx
French loi
Italian legge
Latin legō
French lire
Italian leggere
Latin colligō
English cull
From the same root · cull1
Latin lēgālis ← lēx
Latin lēgifer ← lēx
Latin lēgislātiō ← lēx
Latin lēgislātor ← lēx
Latin lēgitimus ← lēx
Latin prīvilēgium ← lēx
Latin ablēgō ← legō
Latin allegō ← legō
Latin collēga ← legō
Latin dēlēctus ← legō
Latin dēlēgō ← legō
Latin dēligō ← legō
Latin dīligō ← legō
Latin ēligō ← legō
Latin intellegō ← legō
Latin lēctiō ← legō
Latin lēctitō ← legō
Latin lēctor ← legō
Latin lēctūra ← legō
Latin lēgātia ← legō
Latin lēgātiō ← legō
Latin lēgātus ← legō
Latin legenda ← legō
Latin legiō ← legō
Latin legūmen ← legō
Latin neglegō ← legō
Latin perlegō ← legō
Latin praelegō ← legō
Latin relēgō ← legō
Latin sacrilegus ← legō
See all derived words →

Etymology

The word for picking and selecting is inherited from Middle English coilen, also cuilen, cullen and culen,[2][3] borrowed from Old French cuillir (“to collect, gather, pluck, select”), also coillir and cuiller,[4][2][5][6] now French cueillir,[4][5] from Latin colligō (“to gather together”).[7][4][8][9] The Latin verb is formed from com- (“together”) and legō (“to gather”), and also gave collect, so that the two are ultimately the same word.[9] The OED notes that Middle English most often had the form coil, and that the spelling cull appears in the 15th century, perhaps from the French stem cueill-,[4] from which Barnhart also takes it.[8] The French verb has relatives in Spanish coger, Portuguese colher and Italian cogliere.[4] The noun comes from the verb.[4][6][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

To choose or select: about 1225 in Barnhart,[10][8] and before 1250 in a manuscript of the Ancrene Riwle quoted by the MED.[2] The OED's first record is from about 1330, in Mannyng's Chronicle,[4] Etymonline says the mid-14th century,[6] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged the 13th century.[3]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English the verb meant to choose a person or thing for excellence,[2] and the OED notes that it is now most often used of making a literary selection.[4] The general sense of gathering flowers or fruit appears only in Milton's Comus,[4][8] although Barnhart notes that French had it from about 1080.[8] Johnson (1755) defined the verb simply as to select from others or pick out of many.[11] A noun for the act or its product followed before 1618.[4][8][3] The farming meaning turned the word around, from taking the best to taking out the worst: from 1791 a cull was an animal drafted from the flock as inferior or too old for breeding.[4][6] English and American dialects recorded the verb for picking out inferior sheep, and cullers, cullings and cullens for refuse corn and for the poorer animals of a flock, which the English Dialect Dictionary lists from Kent, Sussex and the Midlands.[12] From 1829 the plural named refuse timber in North America.[4] The verb is recorded for selecting livestock in 1889,[4][6] and in 1934, in a New Zealand newspaper, for selecting and killing wild animals to improve the stock or reduce the population,[4][6] with the noun in that sense in 1958.[6] Collins adds, of people, ceasing to employ them.[13] American slang took up the noun for a socially unacceptable person or a rejected fraternity candidate.[14]

Timeline

  • c. 1225 – to choose, select.[10][8] The OED's first record is from about 1330.[4]
  • before 1618 – noun, the act or product of culling; a selection.[4][8]
  • 1637 – to gather or pluck flowers or fruit.[4] Barnhart dates the same passage to 1634.[8]
  • 1713 – to subject something to selection.[4]
  • 1791 – noun, an animal drafted from the flock as inferior.[4][6]
  • 1829 – noun, refuse timber.[4]
  • 1889 – to pick out livestock according to their quality.[4][6]
  • 1934 – to select and kill wild animals.[4][6]
  • 1937 – noun, fruit rejected as inferior.[4]
  • 1958 – noun, a killing of animals deemed inferior.[6]
  • 1975 – noun, in American campus slang, a socially unacceptable person.[14]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To choose from a large number; to pick out the best: She culled a few lively quotations from the old diaries.[13][3][4]
  2. To remove inferior animals from a herd or flock; to reduce a population by killing part of it: Rangers culled the deer in the valley last winter.[13][3][4]
  3. To gather or pluck flowers or fruit.[13][3][4]
  4. To put a group through a process of selection.[3][4]
  5. To stop employing; to get rid of.[13]

Noun

  1. The act or product of culling; especially a selective slaughter of animals: an annual seal cull.[13][4][15]
  2. An animal, plant or other item rejected as inferior, usually in the plural.[13][3][4]
  3. Timber or lumber of the lowest grade.[3][4][15]
  4. A coin too worn or damaged to interest collectors.[3]

Adjective

  1. Picked out as inferior; being a cull.[3][15]

Word family

  • culler
  • cullage
  • culling
  • overcull
  • unculled

cull2 a dupe, fellow

Confidence
Disputed
Formation
Clipping
First attested
1653 Mercurius Democritus

Etymology

The word for a dupe or fellow is rogues' slang of uncertain origin.[6][14] The OED, the Shorter Oxford and the Century Dictionary take it as a shortening of cully, the first two with "perhaps",[4][15][16] while Merriam-Webster Unabridged and Etymonline suggest a shortening of cullion, a base fellow, originally a testicle,[3][6] which is from French couillon, from Latin cōleus (“bag, testicle”).[4][6] Green's Dictionary of Slang queries both, and also a figurative use of culls.[14] The dating complicates the first view: Green's quotes cull from 1653,[14] before the OED's first cully of 1664.[4] Leland proposed a Romani source, comparing a form meaning "man", which the OED reports without adopting it.[4][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

A prostitute's customer: 1653, in the newsbook Mercurius Democritus, where "the old Lecherous Culle" is caught out by a drawer.[14] The OED's first record, for a dupe or simpleton, is from 1698, in In Vino Veritas,[4] and Etymonline dates that sense to the 1690s.[6]

Semantic evolution

Etymonline notes that some authorities reserve cully for the canting term for a dupe and take cull as a generic word for a man or fellow, with no implication of gullibility.[6] Fielding used it in Tom Jones of a person to be robbed.[12] In the 19th century the English Dialect Dictionary records it in Scotland, Northumberland and Cumberland for a stupid, simple fellow, in Scott and in Tyneside songs, and slang kept it for a fellow or man.[12] Northumberland also had it as an adjective, "foolish, stupid", with cullish and cullishly.[12] Merriam-Webster Unabridged labels the noun British dialect,[3] and the Shorter Oxford calls it slang and dialect.[15]

Timeline

  • 1653 – a prostitute's customer.[14]
  • 1698 – a dupe, silly fellow; also a man, a chap.[4] Etymonline dates it to the 1690s.[6]
  • 1749 – Fielding's queer cull, in Tom Jones.[12]
  • 1824 – adjective, foolish, in Northumberland dialect.[12]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (slang, dialect) A dupe or simpleton.[4][3][12]
  2. (slang) A man or fellow.[4][12]
  3. (slang, historical) A prostitute's customer.[14]

Usage notes

A cull is also the fish also called the miller's thumb or bull-head, recorded from 1480 and of unknown origin,[4] and still used in Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Essex, Hampshire and Wiltshire in the 19th century.[12] A verb cull, to hug or fondle (before 1564 to 1659), also a rural name of the pansy (1597–1814), is a variant of coll.[4][3]

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d 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 d e f g h i j k l m n o Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  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. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
  11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  12. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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)
  13. ^ a b c d e f g Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  14. ^ a b c d e f g h Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  15. ^ 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
  16. ^ Whitney, William Dwight, ed. (1889–1891), The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia, New York: The Century Co. (1901 printing)

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Cull.” Etymologically, 6 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/cull. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

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