Coil comes from Old French coillir 'to collect, gather', from Latin colligere 'to gather together', from com- 'together' + legere 'to gather'. The historical trail runs through coillir in Old French, colligere in Latin, and legere in Latin. Morphologically, coil is transparent: it draws on Old French coillir 'to collect, gather', from Latin colligere 'to gather together', from com- 'together' + legere 'to gather'. Used as a noun and verb, coil now means "a length of something wound into rings; to wind into such loops", so the present definition can be read against the older forms and meanings. The same lexical family is also visible in derived forms such as coiled, coiling, and coiler and related forms such as recoil and uncoil. The result is a borrowed or transmitted form whose modern spelling carries a compact record of its route into English.