Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A portion of the amnion, especially when it covers the head of a fetus at birth. Also called pileus.
- n. See greater omentum.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In the middle ages, and down to the seventeenth century
- n. A net for confining the hair, worn by women.
- n. More rarely, a head-dress like a flat turban.
- n. Any kind of small net; a net.
- n. A popular name for a membrane investing the viscera, such as the peritoneum or part of it, or the pericardium. In anatomy, the great or gastrocolie omentum; the large loose fold of peritoneum which hangs like an apron in the abdominal cavity in front of the intestines, depending from the stomach and transverse colon.
- n. A portion of the amnion or membrane enveloping the fetus, which sometimes encompasses the head of a child when born. This caul was (and still is by some) supposed to betoken great prosperity for the person born with it, and to be an infallible preservative against drowning, as well as to impart the gift of eloquence. During the eighteenth century seamen often gave from 850 to 8150 for a caul.
- n. A form used in gluing veneers to curved surfaces. It is shaped to the exact curve or form of piece to be veneered, and is clamped against the veneer until the glue has set.
- n. A stalk; stem.
- n. A cabbage.
Wiktionary
- n. The surface of a press that makes contact with panel product, especially a removable plate or sheet.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A covering of network for the head, worn by women; also, a net.
- n. (Anat.) The fold of membrane loaded with fat, which covers more or less of the intestines in mammals; the great omentum. See Omentum.
- n. A part of the amnion, one of the membranes enveloping the fetus, which sometimes is round the head of a child at its birth; -- called also a
veil .
WordNet 3.0
- n. the inner membrane of embryos in higher vertebrates (especially when covering the head at birth)
- n. part of the peritoneum attached to the stomach and to the colon and covering the intestines
Etymologies
- From Middle French cale. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English calle, from Old English cawl, basket. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The bull whip which was used cut clear through into what we called caul, or the fat of his neck, and he died in the string, hanging by his hands.”
Sunshine and Shadow of Slave Life. Reminiscences As Told by Isaac D. Williams to "Tege"
“* The caul is a, thin membrane, about the consistence of very fine silk, which sometimes covers the head on a new-born infant like a cap.”
“You must know, Madam, that some people are born with a membrane over the face, which is termed a caul, and there has been a vulgar error that such people can never be drowned, especially if they wear this caul about their person in after-life.”
“(_b_) Outside fat, next the skin, called caul fat.”
“Every means was used for the recovery o 'the boy, but it was a' useless, he was quite deed an 'caul'.”
“Some will, or used to, rob themselves of the necessities of life to purchase a baby's "caul," and wear it around their neck as a charm.”
“Eh, Cosmo, laddie, ye'll get yer deid o 'caul'!" she cried.”
“Secondly, that final track 'Marais Le Nit' or 'The Night Marsh' (30 minutes or so of a muted chorus of frog calls and thrumming crickets) which seems to have caused to much consternation across the web - to me it acts as a kind of caul that hangs lightly across the rest of the album, an index of the elemental nature of the themes contained within it.”
“At the restaurant, sausages—be they crepinettes (a thin, flat French sausage wrapped in caul fat) or boudin blanc (a delicate pork, veal and cream sausage)—are made weekly.”
The Wall Street Journal: Lamb Sausages With Poached Fig Salad
“It was rather a relief to him, when having put it and the flying-fish together in a brown paper parcel, and sat upon them for security all the way in the railroad, he found that Job was so indifferent to the precious caul, that he might easily claim it again.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘caul’.
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phrontistery - c
from phrontistery.info
czardas, cytometer, cytology, cytheromania, cystoscope, cystolith, cyrenaic, cypseline, cyprinoid, cyphonism, cynophobia, cytogenesis and 1298 more...
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Jesse's random
bathos, dragoman, tessellated, escutcheon, eikon, mondaine, basilisk, ciborium, rubric, machicolation, jet, defalcation and 198 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Meat Parts: the Cuts, the Innards, an...
T-bone - Sounds good!
Shoulder - Alright.
Liver - Fine.
Sweetbread - Okay.
Gizzard - Pushing it.
Brains - What?!wing, wedge bone sirloin, veal, umbles, tri-tip, tripe, triangle steak, tournedo, top sirloin, top loin, tongue, thigh and 147 more...
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Historical Costume Box
This is just sort of my "unsorted pit" of costumes to be organized later. It's a really broad topic, so right now, anything goes! Thanks for the contributions!
baldric, bliaut, coif, cote-hardie, farthingale, houppelande, partlet, tabard, kirtle, wimple, buskin, greatcoat and 33 more...
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Body bio- baby!
hemorrhage, prognosis, blowsabella, somatotype, ectomorphic, endomorphic, mesomorphic, labia minora, labia majora, entopic, ectopic, ectopic pregnancy and 65 more...
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Joycean Vocab
You ain't read no English til you read Joyce.
rasher, cygnet, usquebaugh, ephebe, entelechy, kish, caul, vicereine, atelier, daguerreotype, communard, connubial and 99 more...
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Unusual words for Words With Friends
A list of words that WWF recognizes as valid - most are unusual words; some are simply high-scoring.
botel, slipe, jeu, chub, chubs, cote, mure, tittle, dev, loo, hoke, helo and 357 more...
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.names
remy, rolf, theobald, jerrick, dray, theade, torfin, roderick, eleazer, keller, leif, melrick and 149 more...
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Hats Off!
trilby, porkpie, panama, fedora, pillbox, stovepipe, turban, boater, ball cap, pastorella, beret, bowler and 219 more...
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bintalshamsa's list
My Favorite Words
weltschmerz, perspicacity, idée fixe, invigilator, salubrious, tchotchke, ex nihilo, invidious, malapropism, naïve, sardonic, elide and 1402 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (C)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
cacophony, cad, cajole, calamity, camomile, camphor, candlemas, candy apple, canopy, canticle, caparison, caravan and 304 more...
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Wenderful's Whirled World of Blurred ...
Lexicon I likez... in no order whatsoever.
omnivalence, cerebration, sprachgefühl, schadenfreude, rutabaga, septuagenarian, foible, vainglorious, leviathan, remunerative, catastrophize, ancillary and 182 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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the omnibus
preponderance, idioglossia, acumen, heteronym, flux, anacoluthon, metonymy, impetus, constellation, exegesis, revelatory, cloistered and 877 more...
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learning
A list of words whose meanings I am learning, either because a) I don't know the meaning b) I know the meaning, but could stand to better appreciate certain inflections or secondary meanings or c) ...
louche, educe, loam, cob, sclerotic, palliate, axial, syndicalist, ecumenical, sally, fatuous, parvenu and 1381 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for caul.
jinglebelljosie a jeweled hairnet, especially worn by women in the Renaissance Aug 15, 2008
reesetee Yes! I was thinking of that too, only it wasn't represented here--but now it is. :-) Dickens had David Copperfield born with one. And didn't Shakespeare's Hamlet have one too? Nov 20, 2007
chained_bear And yet, the first thing I think of when I see this word is the remnant of the amniotic sac that covered some babies' heads when they were born. I mostly see it in historical fiction, but they say this dried thing had (or conferred) magical powers, especially as a protective talisman for the person who was born with it. Nov 20, 2007
reesetee It's fascinating to look at the WeirdNet definition of this word, then the tag, then your definition, skipvia. A versatile word, to be sure. Nov 20, 2007
skipvia A piece of (usually) scrap wood inserted between a clamp's jaws and the items being clamped to distribute pressure and keep the clamp from marring the wood. Nov 20, 2007