coll
verbUS /kɑl/ · UK /kɒl/
Etymology From Middle English collen, from Old French coler, acoler (“accoll, throw arms round neck of”); ultimately from Latin ad + collum (“neck”).
1
Ambitransitive 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 cleare, we will be gonne, / Since, but thy self, true louer I haue none." / With that she sprung full lightlie to my lips / And fast about the neck me colle's, and clips ...1593, Thomas Nashe, The Choice of Valentines:
2 more examples
- '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: