Meaning
The hair of the sheep, llama and some other ruminants.
Etymology
Origin: Old English
From Middle English wolle, from Old English wull, from Proto-West Germanic *wullu, from Proto-Germanic *wullō, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂wĺ̥h₁neh₂. Cognates Cognate with Saterland Frisian Wulle, German Low German Wull, Dutch wol, German Wolle, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish ull, Danish uld; also Welsh gwlân, Latin lāna, Lithuanian vi̇̀lna, Russian во́лос (vólos), Slovak vlna, Bulgarian влас (vlas), Albanian lesh (“wool, hair, fleece”). Doublet of lana. The vowel development u → o → oo is purely graphical. Modern English generally avoids the string ⟨wu⟩ in favour of ⟨wo⟩, and the resulting woll was then altered to wool (as supposedly better representing the pronunciation).
Synonyms & Antonyms
NYT Puzzle Appearances
Accepted in 18 recorded puzzles:
- 2026-06-27WBEILOP
- 2026-06-06OEILNTW
- 2026-01-21OAWNELC
- 2025-08-20LAUOKTW
- 2025-07-26LCOEDNW
- 2025-07-11OAPFELW
- 2025-06-06WANILGO
- 2025-04-11OGNIHLW
- 2025-02-26LWAONKM
- 2024-12-23WDNIHLO
- 2024-07-30OAKLTUW
- 2024-01-02OWBPIEL
+6 earlier appearances in the archive.