Newell

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The upright post at the top or bottom of a staircase or the central pillar around which a spiral staircase turns
2. A heavy vertical post that anchors the handrail at the end of a flight of stairs or forms the core of a winding staircase
3. The sturdy column at the foot or top of a stairway, or the central axis of a spiral stair, that supports the rail

Etymology: The newel is the post at the bottom, top, or turn of a staircase that anchors the handrail, and its name has two possible ancestries that both lead away from anything "new." Some etymologists trace it to Early Medieval Latin "nodellus," meaning "little knot" or "buckle," a diminutive of "nodus." Others point to Late Latin "nucalis," meaning "nut-like," from "nux," "nut." Either way, the word reached English through Old French "noel" and arrived in Middle English as "nowel." The spelling "newel" is a later reshaping. Speakers seem to have folded the word into their own sense of "new," adding the suffix "-el" in the pattern of "novel," which means "new" in Latin. The result looks like a compound of "new" and "-el," but that appearance is a false trail: the word was already in English before the reshaping took place. The word "noyau" is a doublet of this one, a near-identical form from the same root that entered English separately, so the two words share an origin despite their different lives.

Synonyms: newel