coll

To hug or embrace.

Verb

  1. To hug or embrace.
    • So hauing ſayd, her twixt her armes twaine / Shee ſtreightly ſtraynd, and colled tenderly - 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC,...
    • "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...
    • '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:

Origin

From Middle English collen, from Old French coler, acoler (“accoll, throw arms round neck of”); ultimately from Latin ad + collum (“neck”).

Forms

colls colling colled