Sowel

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. A Scottish dialect verb meaning to haul or tug someone roughly, usually by the ears or hair
2. Used in Scots to describe dragging or yanking a person along, typically by grabbing the ears or hair
3. A regional term for pulling forcefully at a person or thing, especially by seizing the ears or hair

Etymology: "Sowel" is a verb in the sense of to probe or sound a wound, and it is an older, variant spelling of "sowl" or "soul" in the sense of to pull or tug by the ears. The verb is recorded in Middle English and goes back to Old Norse, where "sala" or a related form meant to tug or pull the ears, the same root that gives the English word "sowl" as a dialect term for dragging something by the ears or hair. The sense that survives in modern dictionaries is the surgical one: to explore a wound with a probe, a thin instrument used to find the depth or direction of an injury. This use appears in English from the late Middle Ages and was carried on in medical writing, where the probe was often called a sowel or sowle, and the action of probing was described with the verb.

Synonyms: pull, drag, haul, tug, sowl