Skull

How to spell skull

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce skull

What does skull mean?

1. nounThe bony framework of the head that encloses and protects the brain.

Skull in a sentence

• The archaeologists carefully brushed soil away from the ancient human skull.

• A hard helmet protects the cyclist's skull during a fall.

Where does skull come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Skull appears in Middle English as 'scolle' or 'skulle' around the early 1200s, used for the bony case that holds the brain. Its deeper origin is genuinely uncertain, but the most widely accepted link is to Old Norse 'skalli', meaning 'a bald head', carried into northern English by Scandinavian settlers. That Norse word in turn belongs to a family of terms for a shell, a husk, or a hard outer covering, which fits the idea of the skull as the protective casing around the brain. The same notion of a hard shell connects it loosely to words like 'scale' and 'shell' in the broader Germanic word stock. Because the origin is debated, lexicographers usually flag it as probable rather than certain. Spellers should note the hard 'k' is written 'sk', not 'sc', which is exactly what separates it from its homophone 'scull', the rowing term.

How the word is built

• skull (root, from Old Norse skalli 'bald head'), a single unanalysable root with no prefix or suffix