Other forms: rolling, rolled, rolls
To roll is to move by turning over and over — a ball, a coin, a log down a hill. It is also to make something into a tube: roll a carpet, roll up your sleeves, roll a cigarette.
The noun covers a great deal. A roll of paper, a bread roll, a drum roll, a roll of thunder, and the roll as a list of names — hence roll call and the electoral roll. That last one is the oldest sense, from the rolled parchment a list was written on. Note rock and roll, rolling news and on a roll, meaning in a run of success. The verb also describes a ship's side-to-side motion, which is why rolling and pitching are different things at sea.
1verbrollTo move along by turning over and over.
“The ball rolled under the car.”
2verbwindTo wind something into a tube or ball.
“Roll the map up and put an elastic band round it.”
3nounwoundA tube of something wound round itself.
“We are down to the last roll of tape.”
4nounsmallA small round loaf of bread.
“A cheese roll and a coffee, please.”
5nounofficialAn official list of names.
“Her name is on the roll for the first time this year.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
roll is a turning movement, or a tube.
Latin rotula was a little wheel, the diminutive of rota — the same word behind rotate, round and rotary. Everything roll does comes from a wheel: turning over, being wound into a cylinder, and the parchment list that was wound round a stick.
Old French
roeler
Middle English
rollen
English, today
roll
Built from
From Middle English rollen, from Old French roeler. From Middle English rollen, partly from Old French roller, roler, röeler, röoler, from Medieval Latin rotulāre (“to roll; to revolve”), from Latin rotula (“a little wheel”), diminutive of rota (“a wheel”); partly from Anglo-Latin rollāre, from the same ultimate source. Displaced native English welt and partially displaced English wallow.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA