follicle

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin folliculus (“bag, inflated ball, husk, seed pod, bladder”),^[2][3][4][5] a diminutive of follis (“bellows, inflated ball, money bag”),^[2][3][4][5] the source of fool,^[2][6][7] which Etymonline traces to Proto-Indo-European *bhel- (“to blow, swell”).^[4][3] The Middle English Dictionary gives Latin and Old French as sources,^[8] and the OED compares Middle French folicule, recorded in botany in the early 14th century and in anatomy in 1560, and Italian follicolo, recorded in anatomy in the 14th century and in botany in 1561.^[2] Skeat took the word through French.^[9] The first form in Middle English was follicule, also follikel.^[8][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

In surgery, the sac around an encysted abscess: before 1425, in a Middle English translation of Chauliac, which glosses follicule as "husk".^[8][2][5] Dictionaries that begin with the anatomical or botanical senses give later dates: Merriam-Webster Unabridged 1646,^[6] Dictionary.com 1640–50,^[10] and Hoad and Collins the 17th century.^[11][12]

Semantic evolution

The Latin word already covered a seed's envelope, a husk, a pod and a bladder or sac in animals, and these uses came into English one by one.^[2] The surgeons' sense, a layer of tissue around an abscess, later also a sac-like organ such as the gall bladder, died out by 1816.^[2] Sir T. Browne used it in 1646 for a beaver's castor sac.^[2] Grew used it in 1681 for an insect's cocoon, a sense recorded until 1870 that was already found in medieval British Latin.^[2] In botany it was first any dry covering of a seed (1687), and only later the fruit that splits along one side.^[2] Johnson (1755) gave both a cavity with strong coats and a seed vessel.^[13] The sense that now dominates, a small rounded or tubular structure in the body, is recorded from 1715, in a translation of Boerhaave,^[2] and includes the hair follicle and the cavities of the ovary where eggs form.^[14]

Timeline

• before 1425 – in surgery, the sac around an abscess (obsolete by 1816).^[2][8]
• 1646 – the castor sac of a beaver.^[2]
• 1681 – the cocoon of an insect (obsolete by 1870).^[2]
• 1687 – in botany, a dry covering of a seed, later a kind of dry fruit.^[2]
• 1715 – in anatomy, a small rounded or tubular structure in the body.^[2]
• 1760 – in botany, an air sac on a plant of wet ground (obsolete by 1863).^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A small cavity or sac in the body, especially one with a secreting or protective function: Each hair grows from its own follicle.^[3][6][12]
2. One of the cavities in the ovary in which an egg develops.^[3][14]
3. (anatomy) A small round mass of cells, usually with a cavity, or a small lymph node.^[3][6]
4. (botany) A dry fruit formed from one carpel, which splits along one side only to release its seeds, as in larkspur.^{[6][12][3][2]}
5. (botany, obsolete, 1760–1863) A small air-filled sac on a water plant.^[2][14]

Word family

• follicular
• follicle mite
• follicle-stimulating hormone
• Graafian follicle
• hair follicle

Related words

• folliculitis
• fool

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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
8. ^ 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)
9. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press