Etymology: < ceil v.

Etymology: Of ceil v. (recorded of date 1428) and the derived ceiling (1380), ceiled , with the cognate noun found as cyll n. in sense of ‘canopy’ c1500, celure, found as syllure, sylure ?a1400, the derivation is doubtful. The group is not very old in English, and traces of it in French are scanty. Three sources have been suggested: (1) Latin cēlāre , French celer (11th cent. in Littré) to hide, conceal, cover up; (2) Latin caelāre to carve, engrave in relief; (3) Latin caelum sky, vault of heaven. If Latin cēlāre could be shown to have acquired in late Latin or Romanic the simple sense of ‘cover’, it would suitably explain the English words in all their uses; but such is not the case, and in particular, French celer does not appear to approach the required sense. In favour of Latin caelāre (compare cieler Godefroy) there are certainly early quotations (see sense 1, and ceiling n. 1) in which ‘carve’, ‘carving’, is a possible sense; but nothing of the kind occurs under celure n., and if ceil ever meant ‘carve’ this sense evidently soon entirely gave way to one congruous with that of celure n. On the other hand we have the known fact that medieval Latin caelum , Italian cielo , French ciel , acquired the sense of ‘canopy, vault, roof, tester of a bed, etc.’; and there are traces of a derived verb caelāre to canopy or vault, whence caelātum , coelātūra , in senses identical with or derived < caelum . Difficulties are that while ceil v. and celure were so common in 15–16th cent. English, and can hardly be connected with Latin except through French, their occurrence in Old French itself is extremely rare: a single instance of cielee past participle (with variants celee , chelee , couverte ) has been noted in Chrestien de Troyes, Ywain (ed. Förster 964). It is possible that *celeüre , *celure < Latin caelātūra was common in Anglo-Norman, and thence passed into English, but the whole subject remains for the present beset with conflicting difficulties; the apparently certain point being that we cannot separate the English words < caelum , ciel , canopy. See celure n.