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kennel

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Etymology and origin of the English word kennel

Pronunciation

  • /ˈkɛn.əl/[1]

kennel1 dog house

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
1301 Exchequer accounts
Borrowed from
Anglo-Norman *kenil via Middle English
Ultimate origin
Latin canis

Etymology

The word for a dog house is inherited from Middle English kenel,[2][3][4] probably borrowed from Anglo-Norman *kenil,[3][5][6][7][8] a northern form corresponding to Old French chenil, which is recorded in French only from the 16th century.[8][6][4] It comes from Vulgar Latin *canīle,[6][7][5][4][9] from Latin canis (“dog”),[6][3][8] with the suffix -īle of places where animals are kept, as in ovīle (“sheepfold”) and equīle (“horse stable”).[6][8][9] The American Heritage Dictionary gives the Latin form as Medieval Latin canīle,[3] the Shorter Oxford cites Anglo-Latin canillum and kenillum,[10] and the same Latin word gave Italian canile.[11][12] The Latin noun goes back to Proto-Indo-European *kwon- (“dog”), the root of hound.[6][3][5][7] The OED suggests that the sense "pack of dogs" may owe something to Old French chienaille (“pack of dogs”), the source of canaille.[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

A house for hounds or dogs: in 1301, in the form kenil, in an Exchequer account, and in 1302 as kennel;[7][2] Etymonline dates the word to about 1300.[6] The OED's first quotation is from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (before 1400).[8]

Semantic evolution

By about 1478 the word was also used for a pack of hounds,[8][2] and in the 1580s, in Sidney, contemptuously for a pack or gang of people, a use obsolete by 1750.[8] Johnson (1755) gave "a cot for dogs", a number of dogs kept together, and the hole of a fox.[13] The fox's lair is recorded from 1735,[8] and a mean little dwelling from 1837, in Dickens's Pickwick Papers.[8] The verb followed in 1552, "to lie or live in a kennel", and Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis has the transitive sense "to put or keep in a kennel".[8][7][6] The kennel club is recorded from 1857.[6] In slang a kennel was also a police cell (1841) and a house (1862).[14]

Timeline

  • 1301 – a house for hounds, as kenil.[7][2]
  • c. 1478 – a pack of hounds.[8]
  • 1552 – verb, to lie or live in a kennel.[8][4][7]
  • before 1586 – a pack or gang of people (obsolete by 1750).[8]
  • 1594 – verb, to put or keep in a kennel.[8]
  • 1735 – the lair of a fox.[8]
  • 1837 – a mean little dwelling.[8]
  • 1857 – kennel club.[6]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A small shelter for a dog: The puppy slept in a kennel by the back door.[15][16][4]
  2. Usually in the plural, a place where dogs are bred, trained or boarded.[15][16][4]
  3. A pack of dogs, especially of hounds.[15][16][4][8]
  4. The lair of a fox or other wild animal.[15][16][8]
  5. A shabby house; a hovel.[15][4][8]

Verb

  1. To put or keep in a kennel: They kennel the dogs while they travel.[15][16][4][8]
  2. To stay or take shelter in a kennel or lair.[16][4][8]

Word family

  • kennel club
  • unkennel

kennel2 street gutter

Confidence
Established
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
c. 1400 Cursor Mundi, as canel
Borrowed from
Anglo-Norman canel via Middle English
Ultimate origin
Latin canālis

Etymology

The word for a street gutter is inherited from Middle English canel, also spelt cannel,[3][4][8][12] borrowed from Anglo-Norman canel, a variant of chanel (“channel”),[8][12][11] from Latin canālis.[3] The American Heritage Dictionary and Weekley call the source Old North French,[3][11] and the OED lists the Anglo-Norman form kanel and Middle French cannel, meaning a riverbed, a pipe and a gutter.[8] The change of vowel to e is like that of ketch, keg and kedge beside catch and cadge.[8] The Anglo-Norman word, recorded from 1155, already meant a gutter as well as a channel or conduit.[17] The word is thus a doublet of channel and of canal, which replaced cannel in its other senses.[18][10][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

As canel, the bed of a river or stream, before 1400, in the Cursor Mundi;[8] the sense "gutter at the side or middle of a street" is recorded from 1422.[8] Hoad dates the sense "watercourse" to the 13th century and "gutter" to the 14th.[12] The spelling kennel appears in 1582, in Stanyhurst's translation of Virgil,[8] though Merriam-Webster dates the word to the 15th century.[4][19]

Semantic evolution

Johnson (1755) gave "the watercourse of a street" as a sense of kennel, with a quotation from Arbuthnot about a boy dragged through the kennel.[13] In the 19th century the word was still used in Scotland, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire and Warwickshire for a gutter or channel;[20] Weekley called it archaic.[11] From the 17th century slang used it for the vagina, in Rochester's poems.[14]

Timeline

  • before 1400 – canel, the bed of a stream.[8]
  • 1422 – a gutter in a street, as cannel.[8]
  • 1582 – the form kennel, a street gutter.[8]
  • before 1674 – slang, the vagina.[14]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (archaic) A gutter along a street.[16][4][10][11]

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 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  5. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  7. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  8. ^ 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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  9. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  10. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  11. ^ a b c d e Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  12. ^ a b c d Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  13. ^ 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.
  14. ^ a b c Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  15. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  16. ^ a b c d e f g The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  17. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
  18. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  19. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  20. ^ 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)

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Kennel.” Etymologically, 2 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/kennel. Accessed 2 Nov. 2026.

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