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Origin and history of bugle

bugle(n.1)

"brass musical instrument," mid-14c., abbreviation of buglehorn "musical horn, hunting horn" (c. 1300), from Old French bugle "(musical) horn," also "wild ox, buffalo," from Latin buculus "heifer, young ox," diminutive of bos "ox, cow" (from PIE root *gwou- "ox, bull, cow"). Middle English also had the word in the "buffalo" sense and it survived in dialect with meaning "young bull." Modern French bugle is a 19c. borrowing from English.

bugle(v.)

"sound a bugle," 1852, from bugle (n.). Related: Bugled; bugling (1847). Also compare bugler.

bugle(n.2)

"glass bead used to ornament dress," 1570s, of unknown origin.

also from 1570s

Entries linking to bugle

bugler(n.)

"one who plays a bugle," 1793; see bugle (n.). Bugle-boy attested from 1817.

*gwou-

Proto-Indo-European root meaning "ox, bull, cow," perhaps ultimately imitative of lowing; compare Sumerian gu, Chinese ngu, ngo "ox."

It might form all or part of: beef; Boeotian; Bosphorus; boustrophedon; bovine; bugle; Bucephalus; bucolic; buffalo; bugloss; bulimia; butane; butter; butyl; butyric; cow (n.); cowbell; cowboy; cowlick; cowslip; Euboea; Gurkha; hecatomb; kine.

It might also be the source of: Sanskrit gaus, Greek bous, Latin bos, Old Irish bo, Latvian guovs, Armenian gaus, Old English cu, German Kuh, Old Norse kyr, Slovak hovado "cow, ox."

In Germanic and Celtic, of females only; in most other languages, of either gender. For "cow" Latin uses bos femina or vacca, a separate word of unknown origin. Other "cow" words sometimes are from roots meaning "horn, horned," such as Lithuanian karvė, Old Church Slavonic krava.

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    Trends of bugle

    adapted from books.google.com/ngrams/ with a 7-year moving average; ngrams are probably unreliable.

    More to explore

    long-distance
    He constructed telephones expressly for long-distance work, and succeeded in getting a bugle-call heard distinctly over 400...
    call
    From 1580s as "a summons" (by bugle, drum, etc.) to military men to perform some duty; from 1680s as "the cry or note of...
    corn
    It could mean "a wart, a branch of a river, a tongue of land, the end of a bow or sail-yard, the peak of a mountain, a bugle...
    cornet
    "a small horn," diminutive of corn "a horn," from Latin cornu "horn of an animal," also "a bugle horn," from PIE root *ker...
    oryx
    These are the beestes which ye shal eate: Oxen, shepe, Goates, Hert, Roo, Bugle, wylde goate, Unicorne, Origen, and...
    herb
    c. 1300, erbe "non-woody plant," especially a leafy vegetable used for human food, from Old French erbe "grass, herb, plant fed to animals" (12c., Modern French herbe), from Latin herba "grass, an herb; herbage, turf, weeds" (source also of Spanish yerba, Portuguese herva, Italia
    play
    Middle English pleien, from Old English plegan, plegian "move lightly and quickly, occupy or busy oneself, amuse oneself; engage in active exercise; frolic; engage in children's play; make sport of, mock; perform music." It is from Proto-West Germanic *plegōjanan "occupy oneself
    bead
    mid-14c., bede, "prayer bead," from Old English gebed "prayer," with intensive or collective prefix *ge- + Proto-Germanic *bidam "entreaty." This reconstructed word is also the source of Middle Dutch bede, Old High German beta, German bitte, Gothic bida "prayer, request," which a
    spiel
    "glib speech, pitch," slang, 1896 (Ade), probably from the verb (1894, in a San Francisco context) meaning "to speak in a glib manner," earlier "to play circus music" (1870, in a German-American context), from German spielen "to play," from Old High German spilon (cognate with Ol
    brass
    "yellow malleable alloy metal, harder than copper," Old English bræs "brass, bronze," originally any alloy of copper, in England usually with tin (this is now called bronze), later and in modern use an alloy of roughly two parts copper to one part zinc. A mystery word, with no kn

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    Dictionary entries near bugle
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