Etymology: Middle English batayle, bataile, bataille, < Old French bataille (= Italian battaglia, Spanish batalla) < vulgar Latin battālia, corruption of late Latin battuālia, neuter plural of adjective *battuālis, < late Latin battuĕre to beat (perhaps of Celtic origin). Battuālia is mentioned by the grammarian Adamantius or Martyrius (Keil Gram. Lat. vii. 178) as a neuter plural meaning ‘exercitationes militum vel gladiatorum’: Cassiodorius (Keil Gram. Lat.), reproducing the passage, adds, ‘quæ vulgo battālia dicuntur.’ Like murālia, mirabilia, biblia, and many other neuter plurals, battālia came to be used as a feminine singular in Romanic.

Etymology: For the etymology and mutual relations of this and the cognate battle v.³, data are wanting; according to present evidence, the adjective appears earliest, being found in Scotch in 1513. Its form and sense agree with a derivation < *bat , representing Old Norse bati ‘improvement, getting better,’ Dutch baat ‘improvement, advantage, profiting, profit,’ referred to under batten v.¹; with suffix as in brittle, bruckle, fickle, newfangle, and Old English etol, drincol, wittol. This would give as the primary sense ‘given, tending, or fitted, to improve, better, fatten, etc.’ All the related words have a smack of Northern origin: ‘battle or baittle grass’ is still common in south of Scotland. The non-occurrence of bat, while its presumed derivatives, battle, battable, batful, batsome, are so frequent in 16–17th cent., is a difficulty; as is also the fact that batt-le, batt-able point to a verbal rather than a substantive base, and yet can hardly have been formed on batt-en.

Etymology: < French bataille-r (12th cent. in Littré) to fight, < bataille battle n.

Etymology: < Old French bataillie-r, -eillie-r (= Provençal batalhar ) to furnish with batailles ‘battlements,’ temporary or movable turrets of wood, etc. erected upon walls when besieged; formally the same word as bataille battle, though the sense-development is not clear. Later Old French had also in same sense batillier , bastillier , either a distinct formation on bastille (see bastille n.), or refashioned after this word, which eventually displaced bataillier , so that modern French has only bastiller : in English on the other hand the word followed the phonetic course of battle . See also battlement n.

Etymology: See battle adj., of which this appears to be a derivative, and compare the synonymous batten v.¹(As we cannot be quite sure whether the present participle in the earliest instances is transitive ‘feeding,’ or intransitive ‘thriving, flourishing,’ the order of development is uncertain. If derived from the adjective, we should expect the earliest sense to be ‘to render pasture or land battle, to fertilize.’)

Etymology: ? frequentative of bat v.¹, or variant of beetle n.¹; compare batting n. and batler n.