Other forms: hulls
The hull is the main body of a boat that sits in the water. A steel hull, the hull was holed, a wooden hull.
Everything else — mast, deck, cabin — is built on it. Hull shape decides how a boat behaves: a displacement hull pushes water aside and a planing hull rides on top of it. Hull speed is the practical limit for a displacement hull. There is a second word hull meaning the outer covering of a seed or fruit — strawberry hulls — which is the older sense and gives the verb to hull.
1nounhullThe main body of a boat that sits in the water.
“The hull was holed below the waterline and she sank in minutes.”
2nouncoveringThe outer covering of a seed or fruit.
“Take the hulls off before you put them in the bowl.”
hull is an outer body or covering.
Old English hulu meant a seed covering, from a root meaning to cover — the same root as hall and hell, both of them covered places. The boat's hull is the same word, named as the shell the cargo sits inside.
Proto-Indo-European
*ḱel- — to cover, hide
Proto-Germanic
*hul-
Old English
hulu — seed covering
Middle English
hul
English, today
hull
Built from
From Middle English hul, hulle, holle (“seed covering, hull of a ship”), from Old English hulu (“seed covering”), from Proto-Germanic hul-, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European ḱel- (“to cover, hide”); or possibly from Proto-Indo-European kal- (“hard”). Compare Dutch hul (“hood”), German Hülle (“cover, wrap”), Hülse (“hull”); also Old Irish calad, calath (“hard”), Latin callus, callum (“rough skin”), cu калити (“to cool, harden”). For the sense development, compare French coque (“nutshell; ship's hull”), Ancient Greek φάσηλος (“bean pod; yacht”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA