Coil

How to spell coil

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce coil

What does coil mean?

1. nounA length of something wound into a connected series of loops or rings.
2. verbTo wind or twist something into a series of loops or spirals.

Coil in a sentence

• noun

  A thick coil of rope hung beside the harbour wall.

• verb

  He taught the crew how to coil the heavy mooring lines.

• noun

  The electrician replaced the heating coil inside the old kettle.

• verb

  Snakes often coil tightly around a warm branch.

Where does coil come from?

Language of origin: French

Coil entered English in the 1500s from the Old French verb coillir, meaning 'to gather' or 'to collect', which itself descended from the Latin colligere, 'to gather together', built from com- 'together' and legere 'to gather, pick or read'. The original sense in English was nautical: sailors would 'coil' a rope by gathering it into neat concentric loops on the deck. From that practical maritime use, the noun developed to mean any series of rings or spirals, whether of rope, wire, or hair. The same Latin colligere lies behind the more bookish English words 'collect' and 'collection', so coil is a humble cousin of those longer terms. The spelling stays simple and phonetic, with the tricky part being the 'oi' vowel rather than any silent letter.

How the word is built

• coil (single root, from Old French coillir: to gather, collect)