couloir (French)

Where does "couloir" come from?

French couloir was formed from couler “to flow, strain” plus the suffix -oir, which makes nouns for tools or places. Couler goes back through Old French to Latin cōlāre “to filter, strain,” while -oir comes from Old French -eoir and ultimately Latin -(āt)ōrium. The result originally referred to something connected with flowing or straining, and in modern French it came to mean a passageway or corridor, as well as an airplane aisle or a slipstream.

Full etymology tree

• couloir (French), 'corridor, hallway'
  • compound of couler (French), 'to sink'
    • inherited from couler (Old French)
      • inherited from colāre (Latin), 'second-person singular present passive subjunctive of colō'
  • suffix -oir (French), 'A suffix used on verbs to form masculine words for objects or tools used to do something.'
    • inherited from -eoir (Old French)
      • inherited from -(āt)ōrium (Latin)
        • derived from -tōrium (Latin), 'Used to form nouns denoting a place.'
          • suffix -tor (Latin), '-er; used to form masculine agent nouns from verbs'
            • inherited from *-tōr (Proto-Italic), 'Forms agent nouns to verb stems.'
              • inherited from *-tōr (Proto-Indo-European), 'Derives agent nouns from verb roots, denoting someone or something who has performed the root's action.'
                • derived from *-tor-s (Proto-Indo-European)
          • suffix -ium (Latin), 'Suffix used to form abstract nouns, sometimes denoting offices and groups. May no longer be productive.'
            • inherited from -ius (Latin), 'forming adjectives from nouns'

Ancestors

• couler (French)
• -oir (French)

Descendants and derived words

• couloir (English)
• bruit de couloir (French)
• couloir humanitaire (French)
• culoar (Romanian)

Updated March 2026

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Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris