Goal has no reliable etymology. It appears for the first and only time in Middle English as gol “boundary, limit” in the mid-14th century. Some authorities suggest that gol was a borrowing from Middle French gaule, waulle “pole, stick,” from an unattested Germanic cognate of Old Frisian waal, walu “rod,” which is of no real help. The second recorded occurrence of goal, then spelled gole, is in the first half of the 16th century, with the meaning “finishing point of a race, finish line.” The extended sense “aim or purpose, outcome of effort or ambition” also dates from the first half of the 16th century. By the late 16th century, goal, at this point spelled goale, had also acquired the meaning, now obsolete, “starting point of a race,” a translation of one of the many meanings of Latin fīnis (which also meant “boundary, limit” and “finishing point of a race, finish line”).

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