different between backflow vs cowl

English

Etymology

back +? flow

Noun

backflow (countable and uncountable, plural backflows)

1. The flow of a fluid (through a pipe etc) in a direction opposite to that which is normal or intended.

Anagrams

• flowback

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) enPR: koul, IPA^(key): /ka?l/
• Homophone: cawl
• Rhymes: -a?l, -a??l

Etymology 1

From Middle English coule, from Old English c?le, from earlier cugele (“hood, cowl”), from Ecclesiastical Latin cuculla (“monk's cowl”), from Latin cucullus (“hood”), of uncertain origin. Doublet of cagoule.

Noun

cowl (plural cowls)

1. A monk's hood that can be pulled forward to cover the face; a robe with such a hood attached to it.
   • c. 1536, William Tyndale, An Exposycyon vpon the v. vi. vii. Chapters of Mathewe, An Exposycyon of the syxte Capiter,^[1]

     And therfore al our monkes whose professyon was neuer to eate fleshe, set vp the Pope and toke dispensacyons bothe for that faste and also for theyr strayte rules, and made theyr strayte rules as wyde as the hodes of theyr cowles.

   • 1893, Kate Chopin, Désirée’s Baby:^[2]

     The roof came down steep and black like a cowl, reaching out beyond the wide galleries that encircled the yellow stuccoed house.
2. A mask that covers the majority of the head.
3. A thin protective covering over all or part of an engine; also cowling.
   • 1944, Nevil Shute, chapter 8, in Pastoral, London: Pan Books:^[3]

     […] fire was spurting up from the torn engine cowl and glowing in the cockpit.

4. A usually hood-shaped covering used to increase the draft of a chimney and prevent backflow.
   • 1928, Virginia Woolf, chapter 4, in Orlando: A Biography, Penguin, 1942, page 157:^[4]

     In the extreme clearness of the atmosphere the line of every roof, the cowl of every chimney was perceptible […]

   • 1933, Dorothy L. Sayers, “Sleuths on the Scent” in Hangman’s Holiday, New York: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 96,^[5]

     I’m sure I’m very sorry, but it’s always this way when the wind’s in the east, sir, and we’ve tried ever so many sorts of cowls and chimney-pots, you’d be surprised.

5. (nautical) A ship's ventilator with a bell-shaped top which can be swivelled to catch the wind and force it below.
6. (nautical) A vertical projection of a ship's funnel that directs the smoke away from the bridge.
7. (metonymically) A monk.

Derived terms

• cowl flap
• cowlless
• cowlneck
• encowl
• friar's cowl
• Kilmarnock cowl
• the cowl does not make the monk
• uncowl

See also

• cucullated (having a hood-like covering or component)
• cuculliform (cowl-shaped)

Translations

Verb

cowl (third-person singular simple present cowls, present participle cowling, simple past and past participle cowled)

1. To cover with, or as if with, a cowl (hood).
   • 1817, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Human Life, On the Denial of Immortality” in Sibylline Leaves: A Collection of Poems, London: Rest Fenner, p. 269,^[6]

     Why cowl thy face beneath the Mourner’s hood,

   • 1870, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Pelleas and Ettare” in The Holy Grail and Other Poems, London: Strahan, pp. 120-121,^[7]

     But he by wild and way […]

     Rode till the star above the wakening sun,

     Beside that tower where Percivale was cowl’d [i.e. became a monk],

     Glanced from the rosy forehead of the dawn.

   • 1945, Robert W. Service, Ploughman of the Moon, New York: Dodd, Mead, Chapter 8, p. 249,^[8]

     The sky was cowled with cloud, all except a narrow chink where it met the horizon.

2. To wrap or form (something made of fabric) like a cowl.
   • 1964, Hortense Calisher, Extreme Magic in Extreme Magic: A Novella and Other Stories, Boston: Little, Brown, p. 208,^[9]

     When he came downstairs from the bar with the whiskies, she had found a sweater for herself and had cowled a thick raincoat over Sligo.

   • 1972, Edna O’Brien, Night, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1987, p. 70,^[10]

     As the evenings got colder, he used to reach up and pull down the green baize cloth, and cowl it around himself and wear it like a kind of igloo.

3. (transitive) To make a monk of (a person).

Etymology 2

From Middle English cuuel, from Old French cuvel (“vat”), diminutive of cuve, from Latin c?pa (“tub, cask, tun, vat”).

Noun

cowl (plural cowls)

1. (obsolete, Britain) A vessel carried on a pole, a soe.

Derived terms

• cowlstaff

Etymology 3

See caul, probably altered due to semantic association (“something covering the head”).

Noun

cowl (plural cowls)

1. A caul (the amnion which encloses the foetus before birth, especially that part of it which sometimes shrouds a baby’s head at birth).
   • 1896, I. K. Friedman, The Lucky Number, Chicago: Way and Williams, “A Coat of One Color,” p. 55,^[11]

     According to one of his accounts—and his accounts varied with his audience—he was the seventh son of a seventh son, and born with a cowl on his face […]

   • 1982, André Brink, A Chain of Voices, New York: William Morrow, Part 3, “Campher,” p. 331,^[12]

     […] I’d been born with a cowl, which from my earliest age prompted a wide variety of predictions about my future, alternately dire and enthusiastic.

Anagrams

• Clow, low C