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knoll

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Etymology and origin of the English word knoll

Pronunciation

  • /noʊl/[1]
  • UK: /nəʊl/, /nɒl/[1]

knoll1 small hill

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
Alfred's translation of Boethius
Inherited from
Old English cnoll via Middle English

Etymology

The word for the small hill is inherited from Middle English knol, also knolle and cnol,[2][3][4] inherited from Old English cnoll (“hilltop, summit, hillock”).[5][3][6][7][8] It appears as a surname, Knolle, in 1203, before the first record of the common noun in Middle English.[3] It is cognate with Middle High German knolle (“clod, lump, tuber”), German Knolle (“clod, lump, tuber”), Dutch knol (“tuber, turnip”), Old Norse knollr (“mountaintop”), Swedish knöl (“bump, knot, hillock”) and Danish knold (“hillock, clod, tuber”),[3][5][9][10][7] and Klein adds Old High German nollo (“a hill”).[10] Barnhart calls the group of unknown origin.[3] The OED suggests that the Old English word may come from an older *knoð-lo, and so be related to knot;[5] Hoad also derives it from the base of knot,[11] Merriam-Webster Unabridged compares cnotta (“knot”),[8] and Holthausen asks whether it belongs with cnotta or with cnyssan (“to strike”).[7] Wiktionary reconstructs Proto-Germanic *knudla- or *knulla- (“lump”).[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The summit or rounded top of a hill: in Old English, in Alfred's translation of Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiae (before 899).[5][3] Bosworth–Toller glosses cnoll as a hilltop or summit, with examples such as the tops of the mountains appearing after the Flood in the Old English Genesis.[6]

Semantic evolution

Old English already used cnoll both for the top of a hill and for a small rounded hill or hillock,[5][6] and the Middle English Dictionary records knol for a hill or hilltop from before 1200, and in surnames and place names.[2] The sense "summit of a hill" died out in standard English but lived on in dialect;[5][8] the English Dialect Dictionary records knoll, knowl and knowle from Scotland to Devon for a small hill, the crest of a hill or a bank, often in place names, and in the East Riding of Yorkshire for the head.[12] Like its Continental cognates, the word was also used of lumps and swellings: in the Promptorium Parvulorum (1499) it meant a swelling on the skin, in late 17th-century farming writing a turnip, and in Scots, from 1829, a lump or large piece.[5] At sea it came to mean the top of a bank or the highest part of an underwater shoal, a sense the OED quotes from Smyth's Sailor's Word-Book (1867).[5]

Timeline

  • before 899 – the summit of a hill, Old English cnoll.[5][3]
  • before 1200 – a hill, in the Trinity Homilies.[2]
  • 1499 – a swelling on the skin (obsolete).[5]
  • 1669 – a turnip, in dialect (obsolete by 1673).[5]
  • 1829 – in Scots, a lump, a large piece.[5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A small rounded hill or mound; a hillock: They ate their lunch on a grassy knoll above the river.[13][8][4][5]
  2. A rounded elevation rising from the floor of a sea or lake, or the top of an underwater bank, shoal or reef.[8][5]
  3. (dialect) The top of a hill.[8][5][9]

Word family

  • knolly

knoll2 toll, knell

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Derivation
First attested
1379
Ultimate origin
Old English cnyllan

Etymology

The word for the tolling of a bell is inherited from Middle English knol, with the verb knollen,[2][8][4] probably from English an imitative alteration of knell.[8][4][9][11][14] The OED takes the noun as formed with the verb from the same root as knell, perhaps altered later to imitate the sound,[5] and the Middle English Dictionary as perhaps a variant of knil and knillen.[2] Klein calls the verb a blend of knell and toll.[10] Knell itself goes back to Old English cnyllan (“to toll a bell; strike, knock”), probably imitative.[15]

Earliest recorded meaning

A large bell for a church: in 1379–80, in Latin accounts from Ripon that name le knoll.[2][5] The verb, to toll a bell, is first recorded in 1462 in the Middle English Dictionary,[2] and in 1467 in the OED.[5]

Semantic evolution

The sense "church bell" lasted only into the early 15th century, while the noun for the tolling of a bell, or the sound of a large bell, continued.[5][9] The verb, at first transitive, "to toll a bell", was used from 1582 of a bell itself, "to ring, toll".[5] Shakespeare used it for ringing a knell for someone, in Henry IV, Part 2, and for summoning by a bell, in As You Like It;[5] Johnson (1755) quoted Macbeth, "his knell is knoll'd", and defined the verb as ringing the bell, generally for a funeral.[16] By the 19th century the word was archaic in standard English but common in the dialects of the north and Midlands: in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire people asked whom the bell was knolling for, and knoll also meant to strike or knock, with knoll and knoller for a blow.[12]

Timeline

  • 1379 – a large church bell (obsolete by 1412).[5][2]
  • 1379 – the tolling of a bell, the sound of a large bell.[5]
  • 1462 – verb, to toll a bell.[2] The OED's first quotation is from 1467.[5]
  • 1582 – of a bell, to ring, toll.[5]
  • before 1616 – to ring a knell for; to summon by a bell, in Shakespeare.[5]
  • 1842 – to toll out, in Tennyson.[5]

Meanings

Verb

  1. (archaic or dialect) To ring or toll a bell, or to ring a knell for someone.[8][5][13]
  2. (archaic or dialect) Of a bell, to sound or toll: The church bell knolled across the valley.[5][9][16]
  3. (archaic) To summon by ringing a bell.[5][9]

Noun

  1. (archaic or dialect) A knell; the stroke or sound of a tolling bell.[8][13][5][9]

Word family

  • knoller

References

  1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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 Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  4. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  5. ^ 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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  7. ^ a b c Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  9. ^ 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
  10. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  11. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  12. ^ 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)
  13. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  14. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  15. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  16. ^ 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.

Related etymologies

  • knot · also from Old English
  • slack · also from Old English
  • rot · also from Old English
  • wrath · also from Old English
  • idle · also from Old English
  • creed · also from Old English
  • chalk · also from Old English
  • grim · also from Old English
Cite this entry

“Knoll.” Etymologically, 8 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/knoll. Accessed 9 Nov. 2026.

Last edited on . ·