cowl

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   A monk's hood that can be pulled forward to cover the face

   A monk's hood that can be pulled forward to cover the face; a robe with such a hood attached to it.

   • "What differ more (you cry) than Crown and Cowl?" / I'll tell you, friend: a Wiſe man and a Fool.
   • The hermit, as if wishing to answer to the confidence of his guest, threw back his cowl, and showed a round bullet head belonging to a man in the prime of life.
2. 2

   A mask that covers the majority of the head.

3. 3

   A thin protective covering over all or part of an engine

   A thin protective covering over all or part of an engine; also cowling.

   • […] fire was spurting up from the torn engine cowl and glowing in the cockpit.
4. ›+ 11 more definitionsshow fewer

   1. 4

      A usually hood-shaped covering used to increase the draft of a chimney and prevent…

      A usually hood-shaped covering used to increase the draft of a chimney and prevent backflow.

      • In the extreme clearness of the atmosphere the line of every roof, the cowl of every chimney was perceptible […]
      • I’m sure I’m very sorry, but it’s always this way when the wind’s in the east, sir, and we’ve tried ever so many sorts of cowls and chimney-pots, you’d be surprised.
   2. 5

      A ship's ventilator with a bell-shaped top which can be swivelled to catch the wind and…

      A ship's ventilator with a bell-shaped top which can be swivelled to catch the wind and force it below.

      • He flung himself at the port ventilator as though he meant to tear it out bodily and toss it overboard. All he did was to move the cowl round a few inches, with an enormous expenditure of force, and seemed spent in the effort.
   3. 6

      A vertical projection of a ship's funnel that directs the smoke away from the bridge.

   4. 7

      A monk.

   5. 8

      To cover with, or as if with, a cowl (hood).

      • Why cowl thy face beneath the Mourner’s hood,
      • But he by wild and way […] Rode till the star above the wakening sun, Beside that tower where Percivale was cowl’d [i.e. became a monk], Glanced from the rosy forehead of the dawn.
      • The sky was cowled with cloud, all except a narrow chink where it met the horizon.
   6. 9

      To wrap or form (something made of fabric) like a cowl.

      • When he came downstairs from the bar with the whiskies, she had found a sweater for herself and had cowled a thick raincoat over Sligo.
      • As the evenings got colder, he used to reach up and pull down the green baize cloth, and cowl it around himself and wear it like a kind of igloo.
   7. 10

      To make a monk of (a person).

   8. 11

      To scrape together

      • COWL, scrape together. "Cowlin t'cinders up."
   9. 12

      A vessel carried on a pole, a soe.

   10. 13

       A caul (the amnion which encloses the foetus before birth, especially that part of it…

       A caul (the amnion which encloses the foetus before birth, especially that part of it which sometimes shrouds a baby’s head at birth).

       • According to one of his accounts—and his accounts varied with his audience—he was the seventh son of a seventh son, and born with a cowl on his face […]
       • 1982, André Brink, A Chain of Voices, New York: William Morrow, Part 3, “Campher,” p. 331, […] I’d been born with a cowl, which from my earliest age prompted a wide variety of predictions about my future, alternately dire and enthusiastic.
   11. 14

       cold

       • An' bitther cowl; an' min' ye I had play,

The neighborhood

• neighborcucullated
• neighborcuculliform