Anat. Obs. Forms: 5 fosile, 6 faucylle, focyll, focil, 6–8 focile. [ad. med.Lat. focile. Cf. Pr. focil, Fr. focile, Pg. and It. focile.
The med.Lat. word was a transferred use of focīle steel for striking fire (see FUSIL). The Arabian anatomists applied the word zand, one of a pair of sticks for producing fire by friction (dual zandān), to these bones on account of their shape; the Lat. translators rendered this by focile as being the word most nearly equivalent in literal sense.]
One of the bones of the fore-arm or of the leg. Greater focile, the ulna or tibia. Lesser (or over) focile, the radius or fibula.
c. 1400. Lanfranc’s Cirurg., 157. Þe þombe … conteyneþ his firste boon wiþ þe extremite of þe ouer fosile.
1541. R. Copland, Guydon’s Quest. Chirurg., D ij b. The faucylles or forke bones.
1543. Traheron, Vigo’s Chirurg. (1586), 281. The great focile is that which susteineth the arme.
1638. A. Read, Chirurg., ii. 15. His Taylor, who had fractured both the focils of the legge, a little below the knee, about the breadth of a Palme.
1721. E. Naish, in Phil. Trans., XXXI. 227–8. The other great Branch, that runs on the Ligament that ties the Fociles together, was not so much ossified as that which I have described.
attrib. 1541. R. Copland, Guydon’s Quest. Chirurg., K iv b. Of what shape are yt two focyl bones?
1548–77. Vicary, Anat., vii. (1888), 49. Of the two Focel bones; of whiche two bones, the lesse goeth from the Elbowe to the Thombe, by the vppermoste part of the arme.
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), Focil-bone.
