Obs. exc. Hist. Forms: ? 3, 4–5 borel, 4–7 burel, 5 borelle, burell, 6–7 burrell, 8 burail. [a. OF. burel (now bureau), a kind of cloth, dim. of bure, fem. ‘coarse (? brown) woollen cloth, bay, baize,’ of uncertain origin, referred by Diez, Littré, and others to an adj. which appears in OF. as buire ‘dark brown’:—late L. *burreus, *burrius, f. L. burrus red, commonly taken as ad. Gr. πυῥῥός red. Cognate words to F. bure, buire, are Lomb. bur, It. bujo dark; to burel, Sp. buriel, Pr. burel, red-brown; also Sp. buriel, Pg., Pr. burel, coarse woollen cloth. See BUREAU.]
A coarse woollen cloth (prob. originally of brown color: cf. BAIZE); frieze; a garment of this fabric; (plain) clothing.
c. 1300. K. Alis., 5475. The kyng … dooth on a borel of a squyer.
c. 1300. Pol. Songs, 221. In a curtel of burel.
c. 1386. Chaucer, Wife’s Prol., 356. If I be gay sire shrewe, I wol renne out, my borel [in 6 MSS., Petw. burel] for to shewe.
1483. Caxton, G. de la Tour, E ij. Of the valewe of one of her gownes .l. poure peple had had .l. ellys of burell or fryse.
1600. Queen’s Wardr., in Nichols, Progr. Q. Eliz., III. 511. Item, towe remnants of blacke burrell, conteyninge both together 12 yeardes.
1720. Stow’s Surv. (ed. Strype, 1754), I. III. v. 579/1. Burels, or Cloth-listed, according to the Constitution made for Breadth of cloth. Ibid., II. V. x. 286/2. Cloth ought to have been two Ells wide from List to List which was called Burrells.
[1876. Rock, Text. Fabr., vi. 65.]
b. attrib.
a. 1400. Eng. Gilds, 351. Non ne shal make burelle werk, but ȝif he be of þe ffraunchyse of the town.
