The objection to the derivation from the W. bwysius^ wild,
brutal, ferocious, is not only the wide divergence of meaning,
but the extreme improbability that a word of this abstract
meaning should have been borrowed from the Welsh.
BOLT, BOULT, To.— To sift meal. O.Fr. '' buleter, 2l
corruption of bureter, Bureter means to sift through coarse
cloth. O.Fr. buire (Fr. bure), coarse woollen cloth." — Skeat.
It is a fatal objection to this derivation that coarse woollen
cloth is wholly unfit for the process of bolting flour, which
requires a thin, open fabric. No doubt the O.Fr. had
buretel as well as buletel for a bolting-sack, but the former
is as likely to be a corruption as the latter ; and, in fact,
the earhest example given by Littr^ of buleter is from the
" Livre des Rois" of the twelfth century, while his earliest
instance of buretel is of the thirteenth. The old derivation
from the G. beuteln, Du. buideln^ builen, to bolt flour, appears
to me far more probable. The operation was originally
performed by shaking the meal to and fro in a long bag or
sack (G. beutel, Du. buidel)^ of some open material, which
allowed the fiour to escape and retained the bran. The
contracted form bidlen would give an O.Fr. boier^ bouier, or
buler, of which we have evidence in Fr. boulanger^ a baker,



BONFIRE, 27

properly a bolter of flour; and in a passage of Bibeles-
worth, by which the foregoing explanation of boulanger is
vouched —

** De fine farine (mele) vent la flour
Par la bolenge (bulting-clot) le pestour.
Per bolenger (bultingge) est cevere
La flur, e le furfre (of bren) demore."

— Wright's Vocab. 155.
