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FOAL

/fəʊl/4 letters

Definition of FOAL

noun

A young horse or other equine, especially just after birth or less than a year old.

Wiktionary · CC BY-SA

Where it comes from

From Middle English ffoole, foale, fole, fool, foole, fowle, from Old English fola, from Proto-West Germanic *folō, from Proto-Germanic *fulô (“foal”), from pre-Germanic *pl̥Hon-, from Proto-Indo-European *pōlH- (“animal young”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Foole (“foal”), West Frisian fôle (“foal”), Dutch veulen (“foal”), German Fohlen, Füllen (“foal”), Low German Fohl (“foal”), Vilamovian fyłn (“foal”), Danish føl (“foal”), Faroese fyl (“foal”), Icelandic foli, fyl (“foal”), Norwegian Bokmål fole, føll (“foal”), Norwegian Nynorsk fole, fyl, føl (“foal”), Swedish fåle, föl (“foal”); compare also Latin pullus (“young animal”), Greek πουλάρι (poulári, “foal”), Albanian pelë (“mare”), Armenian ուլ (ul, “kid, young of a goat”). Related to filly.

Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).

Word DNA

Line of descent

  1. Proto-Indo-European
  2. Proto-Germanic
  3. Old English
  4. Middle English
  5. English

4 recorded generations before English.

Proto-Indo-European

Deepest traced root

2nd

of 59 source languages in OUTLIER

14.2%

of traced words share this origin (11,506)

How it is built

noun1 syllable

Same root, FOAL · 4 relatives in the game

Its etymology also names Danish, Dutch, Icelandic, Latin, Norwegian, Swedish.

Every Proto-Indo-European word → · The Word DNA of OUTLIER →

Rarity score
Withheld
Revealed only in play
Tier
Withheld
Find it yourself

OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.

FOAL in OUTLIER

Players have found it on 47 boards so far. 70 players have found it across Outlier's history.

Day 1Day 162
Its 47 boards, across 162 finished boards · taller bars are busier boards
47
Boards found on
6
First board
162
Latest board
21
Longest gap, days

It first turned up on Day 6, 27 May 2026. The most recent board was Day 162, 29 October 2026. It was on the latest finished board.

First ever to find it

silentpages

on Day 6, 27 May 2026 - before anyone else in Outlier's history. See the Pioneers

Built from these letters

FOAL
4
Letters
2
Vowels
2
Consonants
4
Different letters
1
Longest consonant run
2
Longest vowel run

FOAL starts with F and ends with L. Sorted, its letters read AFLO - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.

Same letters, different word

One other word uses exactly these letters. Worth knowing at the board: an anagram fits a grid the same way.

Words that start FOAL

Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.

FOALSFOALEDFOALINGFOALISHFOALFOOTFOALFOOTS

Could you have found FOAL?

OUTLIER is a daily word game. One grid, the same grid for everybody, and the words nobody else spots are the ones that pay. This word was on Day 6 - and most players walked straight past it.

Play today's OUTLIER