Etymology: Common Germanic: Old English bolla = Middle Dutch bolle , Dutch bol , Old Norse bolli weak masculine; cognate with Old High German bolla (Middle High German bolle ), weak feminine, ‘bud, round pod, globular vessel’; hence Old English heafodbolla ‘brainpan, skull’; < root *būl- ‘to swell, be swollen’; compare also Old High German bolôn , Middle High German boln to roll. The normal modern spelling would be boll n.¹ which came down to 17th cent. in sense of ‘round vessel’, and is still used in sense of ‘round seed-vessel’; but the early Middle English pronunciation of -ōll as -ōwl (compare roll , poll , toll , etc.), has left its effects in the modern spelling bowl in the sense of ‘vessel’, which is thus at once separated in form from other senses of its own (see boll n.¹), and confounded with bowl n.² a ball, < French boule.See also boll n.¹, boule n.¹

Etymology: Middle English boule , < French boule ball < Latin bulla ‘bubble’, hence, ‘round thing, ball’. The French pronunciation /bul/, is retained in Scots and parts of Northumbria, now often written bool ; the normal English would be /baʊl/ as in foul , fowl , which still prevails in nearly all the dialects from Yorkshire to Devon, and thence to Kent; the pronunciation /bəʊl/, a corruption due to graphic confusion with bowl n.¹, appears to have originated in London and its neighbourhood, but has extended elsewhere with the use of the verb in cricket.

Etymology: < bowl n.²: so medieval Latin bolāre, < bolus: compare modern French bouler, < boule.

Etymology: < bowl n.¹

Etymology: perhaps identical with Middle Dutch bōghelen to curve, crook, < bōghel , now beugel , a bow, hoop, ring: compare boul n.