écrou

• IPA^(key): /e.kʁu/

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Masculinized form from Middle French escroue, from Old French escroe, from Latin scrōfa, originally ‘sow (female pig)’;[1] compare Occitan escrofa ‘screw nut’, Calabrese scrufina ‘screw nut’. The change in meaning is also found in Spanish puerca, Portuguese porca, both ‘sow; screw nut’, and is based on the fact that a boar's penis has a screw-like tip, making the sow's vulva equivalent to a screw nut by analogy.

écrou m (plural écrous)

1. nut (that fits on a bolt), female screw

From Middle French escrou ‘scrap, strip of parchment, scroll’, from Old French escroe, from Old Dutch *skrōda (“end, flap”) (compare Middle Dutch scrōde), from Proto-Germanic *skrudaz, derivative of Proto-Germanic *skrudaną (compare Dutch schrooien ‘to shred’). Lent English scrow, scroll.

écrou m (plural écrous)

1. A prison register, prison admission form.

• écrouer
• levée d'écrou

• coeur, cœur
• coure

• “écrou” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).