Other forms: foals
A foal is a young horse. A newborn foal, mare and foal, the foal stood.
A foal stands within an hour of birth and can run within a day, which is what an animal that survives by fleeing has to manage. It is a foal until weaning, then a yearling, then a colt or filly. Thoroughbreds all share an official birthday of the first of January regardless of when they were born. Note foaling; and that foal and filly come from the same root.
1nounfoalA young horse.
“The foal stood within about an hour.”
foal is a young animal.
Old English fola comes from a Proto-Indo-European root for a young animal. Filly, foal and the Latin pullus, a chick, all come from it.
Proto-Indo-European
*peh₂w-
Proto-Indo-European
*pōlH- — animal young
Proto-Germanic
*fulô — foal
Proto-West Germanic
*folō
Old English
fola
Middle English
ffoole
English, today
foal
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”). 2 Cognate with stq Foole (“foal”), West Frisian fôle (“foal”), Dutch veulen (“foal”), German Fohlen, Füllen (“foal”), Low German Fohl (“foal”), wym fyłn (“foal”), Danish føl (“foal”), Faroese fyl (“foal”), Icelandic foli, fyl (“foal”), Norwegian Bokmål fole, føll (“foal”), Norwegian Nynorsk fole, fyl, føl (“foal”), Swedish fåle, föl (“foal”); compare also Latin pullus (“young animal”), Greek πουλάρι (“foal”), Albanian pelë (“mare”), Armenian ուլ (“kid, young of a goat”). Related to filly.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA