Paali (Paal)

Nautical term covering a number of related objects: pile, as in deeply-driven foundation pillars, fender (dolphin), mooring-post or bollard, which latter hints at the Est. word’s origin, MLG pāl, pahl, pōl, etc. (stake, long cylindrical piece of wood, etc., > mod. Ger. Poller and Dutch paaltje) ultimately from Lat. pālŭs (post). Given the greater influence on maritime terminology of Dutch, that would seem to be the source of Eng. bollard (word not recorded earlier than 1844, which does not mean ‘not used’) but this is said to derive from ‘bole’ so nothing certain here, it could be a simple coincidence. As to ‘dolphin’ or ‘mooring-post’, the French use the curious term duc d’Albe after Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba (1507-1582), who in 1567 or 68 during the Dutch Revolt is said to have tied rebel Dutch Huguenots to stakes plunged into the foreshore for crabs and tides to finish them off. But another French word for bollard is bitte, which also means ‘dick’, so there’s that. Lastly, Latin’s pālŭs (also giving us its mod. Ital. diminutive for mooring-post palina) has another pronunciation, pălūs (i.e. switch of long and short vowels) and this means marsh or pond, reflected in the old Venetian(?) expression Palo fa palù (loosely translated as ‘poles make swamps’, essentially warning locals of the danger of just planting mooring-posts any old where) and tempting though it may be to see an organic connection between the two resulting in Dutch polder (see Poldri) the word’s immediate etymology is from Middle Dutch polre > pol (drained or diked land) with a ‘d’ thrown in for fun where polre itself was originally a dike or dam and these of course could first have been made from tree trunks or boles, particularly ironic in a country now devoid of trees and often known as Holland, from Old Dutch holtlant (wood-land) with the titilating suggestion that the wood, once trees on the land, became boles ‘creating’ the land (roughly 50% of the Netherlands is polder). So the pālŭs-pălūs connection is not completely, um, outlandish. Caveat lector! New street in the docks, but nobody knows where.