Etymologically
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wall

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Pronunciation

  • IPA: UK /wɔːl/, US /wɔːl/, /wɑːl/[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English wal, inherited from Old English weall (“rampart, earthwork; city wall; side of a building”), Anglian wall,[2][3][4] an early West Germanic borrowing borrowed from Latin vallum (“rampart with palisades; row of stakes”),[2][3][5] perhaps a collective form of vallus (“stake”).[2][3][4] Barnhart derives vallus from Proto-Indo-European *wel- (“to turn”),[3] and Etymonline reports Watkins's *walso- “a post”.[2] Old Saxon and Dutch wal (“rampart”) and German Wall are also from the Latin.[5][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old English weall, a rampart or city wall: about 725, in Beowulf.[3] The OED's first quotations are from about 825 and about 900.[7] Word Origins notes that the Latin source implies the earliest walls were defensive ones around a town or camp.[8]

Semantic evolution

Old English weall also meant “dam, cliff, rocky shore”.[2] The side of a building or room is from Old English.[2] An embankment against the sea is from 1330,[7] and a person or thing serving as a defence from about 1415.[7] Go to the wall originally meant “to give way, be beaten”, and now means “to fail commercially”, from the late 16th century; it may be linked to the proverb the weakest go to the wall.[8] The verb, “to enclose with a wall”, is from about 1250,[3] “to fill up with a wall” from about 1500, and “to shut up in a wall” from the 1520s.[2] Wallflower was a plant growing on walls in 1578, and a person who sits by the wall at a dance from 1820.[3] Wallpaper is from 1827.[3]

Timeline

  • c. 725 – a rampart, city wall.[3]
  • c. 1250 – verb, to enclose with a wall.[3]
  • 1330 – a sea wall.[7]
  • c. 1500 – to wall up.[2]
  • 1578 – wallflower, the plant.[3]
  • late 16th century – go to the wall.[8]
  • 1820 – a wallflower at a dance.[3]
  • 1827 – wallpaper.[3]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. An upright structure of stone, brick or other material that encloses or divides an area or supports a roof.
  2. A defensive rampart around a town or castle.
  3. Something like a wall in appearance or effect: a wall of silence.
  4. (anatomy) The lining of a body cavity or organ.

Verb

  1. To enclose, divide or protect with a wall.
  2. To close an opening with a wall: wall up.

Word family

  • wallless
  • wall-like
  • interval
  • wallflower
  • wallpaper
  • walled

Usage notes

A Scots and American verb, “to roll the eyes”, is related to walleyed.[5][9] An Old English verb weallan, “to boil, gush out”, related to the verb well, survived as wall in dialect.[9]

References

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  4. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  5. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  7. ^ a b c d Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  8. ^ a b c Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  9. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press