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''foal'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20250825221400-00-⌔

foal - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

foal (plural foals)

  • A young horse or other equine, especially just after birth or less than a year old.
  • (mining, historical) A young boy who assisted the headsman by pushing or pulling the tub.

Verb

foal (third-person singular simple present foals, present participle foaling, simple past and past participle foaled)

  • (ambitransitive) To give birth to (a foal); to bear offspring.
    • ✤ All the time, our overfraught hearts are beating at a rate that would far outstrip the fastest gallop of the fastest horses ever foaled.1
    • ✤ “Well,” said John, “I don’t believe there is a better pair of horses in the country, and right grieved I am to part with them, but they are not alike; the black one is the most perfect temper I ever knew; I suppose he has never known a hard word or a blow since he was foaled, and all his pleasure seems to be to do what you wish; […]2

Etymology

From Middle English ffoole, foale, fole, fool, foole, fowle, from Old English fola, from Proto-West Germanic ﹡folō, from Proto-Germanic ﹡fulô (“foal”), from pre-Germanic ﹡pl̥Hon-, from Proto-Indo-European ﹡pōlH- (“animal young”).

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /fəʊl/, [fɔʊɫ]
    • (doll–dole merger) IPA: /fɒl/
  • (Australian, New Zealand) IPA: /fɐʉl/
  • (General American) IPA: /foʊl/, [foɫ]
  • Rhymes: -əʊl

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1859, Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC: ↩

  2. [1877], Anna Sewell, “Earlshall”, in Black Beauty: […], London: Jarrold and Sons, […], →OCLC, part II, page 102: ↩

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