coll
/kɒl/US/kɑl/
coll verb: to hug or embrace.
Verb
coll (third-person singular simple present colls, present participle colling, simple past and past participle colled)
- To hug or embrace.
- So hauing ſayd, her twixt her armes twaine / Shee ſtreightly ſtraynd, and colled tenderly1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 420
- "As how, my lambkin," blushing, she replide, / "Because I in this dancing schoole abide? / If that it be, that breede's this discontent, / We will remoue the camp incontinent: / For shelter onelie, sweete heart, came I hither, / And to auoide the troblous stormie weather; / But now the coaste is...1593, Thomas Nashe, The Choice of Valentines
Proper noun (1) capitalized: Coll
Coll
- An island of the Inner Hebrides in Argyll and Bute council area, Scotland, United Kingdom.
Proper noun (2) capitalized: Coll
Coll (plural Colls)
- A diminutive of the male given name Nicholas, of rare usage. A medieval English short form of the male given name Nicholas; very rare today.
- A surname originating as a patronymic.
Examples of coll in a sentence
- 'You couldn't expect her to throw her arms round 'ee, an' to kiss and to coll 'ee all at once.'1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, volume 1, London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., page 82:
- They kissed and colled in parks and fields and, better, a / Warm bed, her own.1995, Anthony Burgess, Byrne:
Forms of coll
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | colls |
| present participle | colling |
| past participle | colled |
| past | colled |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Colls |
Origin of coll
From Middle English collen, from Old French coler, acoler (“accoll, throw arms round neck of”); ultimately from Latin ad + collum (“neck”).
Uncertain. The island name, from Latin Colosus (704 AD), is often associated with an Old Irish *koll or Proto-Brythonic *koll, themselves both from Proto-Celtic *koslos (“hazel”). Derivation from Ancient Greek κολοσσός (kolossós, “giant figure”) has been called "naïve" by Coates (2006).
Clipping of Nicholas
Words formed from coll
Words that rhyme with coll
7 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about coll
- What does coll mean?
- Coll means to hug or embrace.
- How do you use coll in a sentence?
- 'You couldn't expect her to throw her arms round 'ee, an' to kiss and to coll 'ee all at once.'
- What part of speech is coll?
- Coll can be a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce coll?
- Coll is pronounced /kɑl/ (US).
- What is the past tense of coll?
- The past tense of coll is colled.
Words near coll in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: coll (page history and authors); Coll (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-coll.wav.
Cite this entry: “coll.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/coll. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.