cowl

Etymology 1

From Middle English coule, from Old English cūle, from earlier cugele (“hood, cowl”), from Ecclesiastical Latin cuculla (“monk's cowl”), from Latin cucullus (“hood”), of uncertain origin. Doublet of cagoule.

noun

1. A monk's hood that can be pulled forward to cover the face; a robe with such a hood attached to it.
   c. 1536, William Tyndale, An Exposycyon vpon the v. vi. vii. Chapters of Mathewe, An Exposycyon of the syxte Capiter, And therfore al our monkes whose professyon was neuer to eate fleshe, set vp the Pope and toke dispensacyons bothe for that faste and also for theyr strayte rules, and made theyr strayte rules as wyde as the hodes of theyr cowles.
   The roof came down steep and black like a cowl, reaching out beyond the wide galleries that encircled the yellow stuccoed house. 1893, Kate Chopin, Désirée’s Baby
2. A mask that covers the majority of the head.
3. 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. 1944, Nevil Shute, chapter 8, in Pastoral, London: Pan Books
4. A usually hood-shaped covering used to increase the draft of a chimney and prevent backflow.
   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. 1933, Dorothy L. Sayers, “Sleuths on the Scent”, in Hangman’s Holiday, New York: Harper & Row, published 1987, page 96
5. (nautical) A ship's ventilator with a bell-shaped top which can be swivelled to catch the wind and force it below.
6. (nautical) A vertical projection of a ship's funnel that directs the smoke away from the bridge.
7. (metonymically) A monk.

verb

1. To cover with, or as if with, a cowl (hood).
   Why cowl thy face beneath the Mourner’s hood, 1817, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Human Life, On the Denial of Immortality”, in Sibylline Leaves: A Collection of Poems, London: Rest Fenner, page 269
   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. 1870, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Pelleas and Ettare”, in The Holy Grail and Other Poems, London: Strahan, pages 120–121
   The sky was cowled with cloud, all except a narrow chink where it met the horizon. 1945, Robert W. Service, chapter 8, in Ploughman of the Moon, New York: Dodd, Mead, page 249
2. 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. 1964, Hortense Calisher, “Extreme Magic”, in Extreme Magic: A Novella and Other Stories, Boston: Little, Brown, page 208
   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. 1972, Edna O’Brien, Night, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, published 1987, page 70
3. (transitive) To make a monk of (a person).
4. (Yorkshire) To scrape together
   COWL, scrape together. "Cowlin t'cinders up." 1865, William Stott Banks, Wakefield Words, page 17

Etymology 2

From Middle English cuuel, from Old French cuvel (“vat”), diminutive of cuve, from Latin cūpa (“tub, cask, tun, vat”).

noun

1. (obsolete, Britain) A vessel carried on a pole, a soe.

Etymology 3

See caul, probably altered due to semantic association (“something covering the head”).

noun

1. 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 […] 1896, I. K. Friedman, “A Coat of One Color”, in The Lucky Number, Chicago: Way and Williams, page 55
   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.