▪ I. knurl, nurl, n.
(nɜːl)
Also 7–9 knurle.
[app. a derivative (? dim.) of knur; but cf. also knarl, gnarl n.]
1. A small projection, protuberance, or excrescence; a knot, knob, boss, nodule, etc.; a small bead or ridge, esp. one of a series worked upon a metal surface for ornamentation or other purpose.
| 1608 2nd Pt. Def. Ministers' Refus. Subscript. 131 [It] grew up naturally from the roote,..without knot or knurle, right and streight. 1611 Cotgr., Goderonner,..to worke, or set with knurles. Ibid., Neud, a knot..a knurre, or knurle in trees. 1651 J. F[reake] Agrippa's Occ. Philos. 272 From the crown of the head to the knurles of the gullet is the thirteenth part of the whole altitude. 1658 R. White tr. Digby's Powd. Symp. (1660) 117 A knurle either of waxe, gumme, or glue. 1773 Phil. Trans. LXIII. 374 Those small fine blue knobs, that are to be seen round the rim or upper knurl of the coat [of a sea-anemone]. 1806 J. Grahame Birds Scot. 48 The nest deep-hollowed, well-disguised as if it were a knurll in the bough. |
2. A thick-set, stumpy person; a deformed dwarf. dial.
| 1674–91 Ray S. & E.C. Words, Knurl, a little dwarfish person. 1793 Burns Meg o' the Mill ii, The laird was a widdiefu', bleerit knurl. 1811 Willan W. Riding Gloss., Knurl, a hunch-backed dwarf. |
3. A knurling-tool.
| 1879 Sci. Amer. XL. 224 Knurls of various patterns..are employed in ‘beading’, ‘milling’, or knurling the heads of screws, the handles of small tools, &c. Ibid., Examples of knurling done with the different knurls. |
▪ II. knurl, nurl, v.
[f. prec. n. The vbl. n. knurling is recorded long before the simple vb.]
trans. To make knurls, beadings, or ridges (on the edge of a coin, a screw-head, etc.); to mill, to crenate.
| 1875 Knight Dict. Mech. 1536/2 A sunken groove, indented so as to form the counter-part of the bead which is to be nurled on the head of the temper-screw. 1879 [see knurl n. 3]. |