Kell

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. To put to death or cause the end of something's life
2. To destroy or bring about the demise of a living creature
3. To cause cessation of existence through lethal means

Etymology: "Kell" is an English word for the membrane that sometimes covers a newborn's head, a fragment of the amniotic sac. The "compare caul" note points to the word's closest relative, and the two are best understood together. "Caul" is the older and more widely recorded form, and "kell" is a variant of it, so the two are essentially the same word appearing in different spellings and regional forms. Because the source offers no further dates, quotations or first-use details, the history stops at this relationship. What matters is that "kell" is not a separate coinage with its own story but a second spelling of a term that English already used for the same thing. The pairing is a reminder that the same bit of anatomy has been named with more than one spelling in English, and the variants have simply persisted side by side.