Word.ws English Dictionary

nowell

nowell is the archaic spelling of noel.

Meaning of noel

Noun

noel (plural noels)

  1. A kind of hymn, or canticle, of mediaeval origin, sung in honor of the birth of Christ; a Christmas carol.
    • The first Nowell the Angel did say / Was to three poor Shepherds in the fields as they lay[…]1833, William Sandys, Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern, page 74

See all 8 meanings of noel

Proper noun capitalized: Nowell

Nowell (plural Nowells)

  1. A surname.

Forms of nowell

Noun
pluralnowells
Proper noun
pluralNowells

Origin of nowell

From Middle English Nowel, from Old French noel (“Christmas”).

Questions about nowell

What does nowell mean?
Nowell means a surname.
What is nowell the archaic spelling of?
Nowell is the archaic spelling of noel.
What part of speech is nowell?
Nowell is a proper noun.

Words near nowell in the dictionary

  1. nowdocs
  2. nowds
  3. Nowe Brusno
  4. nowed
  5. nowel
  6. nowell
  7. nowells
  8. nowels
  9. Nowendoc
  10. Nower
  11. nowhat

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nowell (page history and authors); Nowell (page history and authors); noel (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.

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Cite this entry: “nowell.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nowell. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.