Does anyone know the etymology and pronunciation of "thole"? Is it pronounced likesole with a lisp, or the past tense of tell, as in, "I tole you so"? One list member (who shall remain nameless) speculated it's like "t'hole," more or less contracted from "the hole." O(a)r, perhaps, contracted from the Book of Tholes, "...and they knew not their holes from their oars on the caprails." The derivation is from a Common Germanic word meaning 'pin', 'peg' or something like that. In Norwegian, we have 'Tolle'; in Danish 'Tol'; in Swedish 'Tull', German 'Doll', 'Dolle', etc.....with combinations like 'Tollepinne', 'Tollegang', 'Aartolle' (Oar thole) etc. It was also adopted into French 'Toulet', 'Tolet'; Spanish 'Tolete'. It turns up in combination in the word used for 'Gunwale' in many northern languages eg German 'Dollbaum' (tholetimbler?). There is a tendency in many tongues to use it mainly in the plural form.
"The variants 'thoule', 'thowle' correspond to the present oarsman's pronunciation, and appear in the 17th Century; they are probably due to association with Dowel. The want of evidence between the Old English period and the 15th Century probably indicates that the loss of the Old English and its supersession by the Old Norse."Thus suggests that in some English dialects it was pronounced to rhyme with 'Owl', and this confirmed by the alternative spelling 'Thowl' in an old English-Swedish dictionary (Uggla). Whether this way of saying the word reached North America is hard to say. According to the Dictionary of Newfoundland English, pronunciations in the outports included 'Tole', 'Towl' and 'Tow' (to rhyme with 'how', as in the combination 'Towpin' (Tholepin). So it would not be surprising if in some East Coast locations in the US and Canada, similar pronunciations would have been found.
There are two varieties of 'th' in English. One as in 'thick' and one as in
'then'. The same thing is true in Demotic Greek and in Icelandic. Although
'Thole' is pronounced the first way, it was probably more closely related to
other pronunciation in Old English.
{John H Harland}
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