Mool

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A heavy stone or cylinder used to crush and grind grain into flour, typically the lower or upper stone in a pair
2. The stone component of a mill apparatus that grinds grain by rotating against another stone
3. A grinding stone employed in milling to reduce grain to powder or meal

Etymology: In Scots and northern English dialect, "mool" is a variant of "mould" in its older sense of loose earth or soil, the crumbly ground that gardeners and graveyard workers handle. It is the same word that gave us the verb "to mould" in the sense of shaping something soft, though the two senses have drifted apart in standard English. The root is Old English "molde," meaning earth or dust, which belongs to a Germanic family that also includes Dutch "mold" and Old Norse "mold." Written forms like "mool" preserve a vowel that standard English has since smoothed into the "ou" of "mould," so the dialect spelling sits closer to the older pronunciation. The English "mould" meaning a fungal growth is a separate development that came later and does not share this line of descent.