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pulley

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Etymology and origin of the English word pulley

Pronunciation

pulley1 grooved wheel

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
1295 Exchequer accounts
Borrowed from
Anglo-Norman pulie via Middle English
Ultimate origin
Ancient Greek πόλος

Etymology

The word for the grooved wheel is inherited from Middle English puli, also polei and polive,[2] borrowed from Anglo-Norman pulie and Middle French polie,[3] recorded in Old French from about 1150,[3] and directly borrowed from Medieval Latin poliva, also puliva.[2][4][5] These Latin forms appear in British sources from 1290, before the matching English ones, so the ending may have begun in Latin.[3] The French word probably goes back to an unattested form Medieval Latin *polidia, a neuter plural taken as a feminine singular,[3][6] from *polidium,[3][7] which Ayto and Merriam-Webster Unabridged call Vulgar Latin.[8][7] That is probably from an unattested Ancient Greek *πολίδιον (polídion, “little pivot or axis”),[3] a diminutive of πόλος (pólos, “pivot, axis”),[3][4][5][9] the source of pole "end of an axis",[8][5] which Klein and the American Heritage Dictionary derive from Proto-Indo-European *kʷel- (“to bend, turn”).[9][10] The OED allows that the word may also have come partly through Middle Dutch poleye,[3] and compares Italian puleggia and Spanish polea.[3][9] Ayto and Weekley stress that it has no etymological link with pull,[8][11] though the OED thinks some spellings may show association with that verb.[3] Weekley also held that the word was influenced by Latin pullus (“young animal, colt”), since mechanical devices are often named after animals.[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

A wheel with a rope running round it, for hauling: le palley, in an Exchequer account of 1295,[2][3] though the OED leaves open whether this and a 1324 example are Anglo-Norman or English.[3] Barnhart starts from puly in 1296,[12][5] a form the OED and the Middle English Dictionary print as pulyfo in a Latin sentence,[3][2] and Etymonline says the late 13th century.[4] The OED's first certain English record is in a Pipe Roll of 1357.[3]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English the word was used for hoisting gear in general and for ships' tackle in particular, with special names such as the bowline pulley and the bowsprit pulley.[2] Chaucer has it once, as polyve.[13] The spelling pulley is first recorded in 1574.[5] In the 16th century the idea of a wheel guiding a cord spread in several directions: to a part of the body through which a tendon passes (1565),[3] to figurative uses (1581),[3] to a torture device (1584, now historical),[3][14] and to a wheel on a shaft driven by a belt (before 1586).[3] The verb, to hoist with a pulley, is recorded in the OED from 1581, in Etymonline from the 1590s.[3][4] Johnson (1755) still defined the noun simply as a small wheel on a pivot with a furrow for a rope.[15] In the coal trade of Northumberland and Durham it named the wheel above a pit that carried the winding rope, and there the verb meant to overwind the cage up to that wheel.[16] A Scottish use for a clothes-drying frame hung from the ceiling is recorded from 1936.[3]

Timeline

  • 1295 – palley, a hauling wheel, in an Exchequer account.[2][3]
  • 1357 – a grooved wheel in a frame or block, the OED's first certain English record.[3][14]
  • 1565 – (anatomy) a loop through which a tendon passes.[3][14]
  • 1574 – the spelling pulley.[5]
  • 1581 – figurative uses of the noun; verb, to hoist with a pulley.[3]
  • 1584 – an instrument of torture.[3][14]
  • before 1586 – a wheel or drum on a shaft, turned by a belt.[3]
  • 1936 – a clothes-drying frame hung from the ceiling, in Scotland.[3]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A wheel with a grooved rim in which a rope, chain or belt runs, used to change the direction of a pulling force: She hauled the bucket up over a pulley on the barn beam.[17][7][3]
  2. A set of such wheels in a block, used to lift heavy loads.[17][7]
  3. A wheel or drum on a shaft, driven by a belt or driving one, to transmit power.[17][3][18]
  4. (anatomy) A structure working like a pulley, especially a fibrous loop through which a tendon passes; a trochlea.[3][14]
  5. (chiefly Scottish) A wooden frame hung from the ceiling on pulleys, for drying clothes.[3]

Verb

  1. To raise or hoist with a pulley, or as if with one.[3][4]

Word family

  • pulleyless
  • pulley bone
  • pulley block

pulley2 slide for barrels

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
1790 Act of Parliament
Borrowed from
French poulain
Ultimate origin
Latin pullus

Etymology

The word for the barrel slide is apparently borrowed from French poulain (“chute or slide for unloading barrels”), remodelled through confusion with pulley1.[3] The OED finds no continuity with the earlier English use of the French word.[3] Merriam-Webster Unabridged instead takes it as an alteration, influenced by the wheel word, of Middle English puleyn, from Middle French poulain (“foal”), from Late Latin pullāmen, from Latin pullus (“young of an animal”).[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A slide or chute for unloading barrels of wine or beer from a cart or lowering them into a cellar: 1790, in an Act of 30 George III.[3][14]

Semantic evolution

The French word already linked a foal with a device for handling barrels, and Cotgrave glossed it both as a colt and as the rope that lets wine down into a cellar.[11] In 1653 Urquhart's Rabelais rendered it with the wheel word, as pully and pully-rope, which the OED treats as the wheel word wrongly used to translate it.[3][11] In dialect of western Middlesex, the word named a kind of ladder on which brewers' men rolled casks on and off a dray.[16]

Timeline

  • 1790 – a slide for unloading barrels.[3][14]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A chute or slideway for moving barrels, as from a cart into a cellar.[3][7]

Usage notes

Green's Dictionary of Slang records, separately, a 19th-century slang word pulley, a thief's accomplice and usually a woman, which it derives from French poulet (“chicken”),[19] and the phrase off one's pulley, insane or eccentric, from 1996.[19]

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f 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 p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  4. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  5. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  8. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  9. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  10. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  11. ^ a b c d Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  12. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
  13. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
  14. ^ a b c d e f g Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
  15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  16. ^ 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)
  17. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  18. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  19. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Pulley.” Etymologically, 6 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/pulley. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

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