Etymology: < Old French foil, fuil, fueil (masculine) (= Provençal folh, fuoill, Italian foglio < Latin folium leaf, cognate with Greek ϕῦλλον), and Old French foille, fueille (feminine) (modern French feuille, = Provençal folha. foilla, Spanish hoja, Italian foglia < Latin folia, plural of folium). The feminine noun, originally collective, has superseded the masculine in all modern Romance languages, except that Italian foglio remains in the sense ‘leaf of a book’.

Etymology: < foil v.¹ 4.

Etymology: < foil v.¹

Etymology: < foil v.¹ (sense 2); compare Old French foulis , Cotgrave foulée , foulement in same sense, < fouler foil v.¹

Etymology: Of obscure origin.Usually regarded as < foil v.¹, and as denoting etymologically ‘a sword with the point foiled or blunted.’ But the verb does not appear to have meant ‘to blunt’: the reading of the quarto in Othello i. iii. 270, even if genuine, does not admit of this interpretation. Another suggestion is that the phrase at foils originally belonged to foil n.² in the sense of parrying, and that the name of the instrument was evolved from the phrase. It is noteworthy that foin n.² occurs in 17th cent. in the sense of foil ; possible (in spite of the want of evidence) this goes back to the 16th cent., so that foil might be an etymologizing alteration of foin , after foil v.¹ That the word is, by some far-fetched association, a transferred use of foil n.¹ a leaf (compare French fleuret fencing foil, lit. ‘floweret’, the button being compared to a bud) is a possibility for which at present there is no evidence.

Etymology: irregular representation of Old French fuler, foler, fouler (modern French fouler ), to full cloth, to tread, trample down, press hard upon, crush, oppress; corresponding to Provençal folar , Spanish hollar , Italian follare in similar senses < popular Latin *fullāre originally to full cloth, < fullō a fuller: compare full v.²The English forms foyle , foil , and Scots fulȝe , fulyie , would normally represent not Old French foler , fouler , but fouillier (modern French fouiller ), which has the quite different senses ‘to dig, grub up, root (as a swine), search’. The cause of the irregularity has not been discovered: a suggestion is that the noun foulis , foleïz = foil n.⁴ may have been confused with fouillis the ‘rooting’ of a swine, a mass of dirt and rubbish, and that this led to a confusion in the verb; but it is doubtful whether this would account for the facts.

Etymology: < foil n.⁵

Etymology: perhaps < French fouiller to grub up; compare French fouilleuse (Boiste), fouilleur (Littré), a kind of light plough.

Etymology: < foil n.¹