coil n2, v2 [Ultimately from Scots, Engl dial, but the concentration of US exx along the northern border suggests Canada, where the word is (or was) in common use, as the immediate source. Cf OED2 coil n.5 and v.5, EDD coil sb.2 and v.2, SND cole, col(l) n. and v., DPEIE.] old-fash
A cock n2 of hay; to put (hay) into cocks.
1908 Eve. Item (Richmond IN) 3 Oct 17/5, Even as late as ten years ago hay time required . . one [man] to put the rows in coils or hay cocks. 1920 Cavalier Co. Farmers Press (Langdon ND) 22 July 8/1, Say don’t the words “Remembered that camp with sweet regret” ring true these days when in the hay coils we sweat, with emphaisis [sic] on the S-W-E-A-T. 1930 Escanaba Daily Press (MI) 15 Aug 11/3, Most of the hay harvest has been completed on the [Garden] Peninsula. Just a few fields are left with the bleached out coils of hay awaiting removal to the barn. 1937 Wagoner Tribune (OK) 9 Nov 3/1, That the hay loader used to take up the crop from the windrows does so without cocking or coiling the hay is one of the most serious criticisms against it, Hudiburg comments. 1939 Eve. News (Sault Sainte Marie MI) 7 July 1/8, The . . house burst into flames and was consumed so rapidly that Mrs. Jollineau barely escaped, said Mastow, who was coiling hay nearby when the fire started. 1959 AmSp 34.145, The Canadianism coil, recorded regularly in border communities of Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, has invaded northwestern Minnesota (in the speech of a farmer near Crookston who said that a coil is made with a fork and a cock with a rake) and perhaps North Dakota (as indicated by a questionnaire response). 1963 Marshall Co. News (Marysville KS) 17 Sept 6/8, My grandfather prided himself on the expert way he could coil the hay. He had a flick of the wrist that somehow seemed to pluck just the right amount of hay from the windrow, and then finally there would be a larger forkful that covered up the whole affair. . . Proof of the coil came when you forked it on the wagon. The poor coil tumbled apart. 1966 DARE (Qu. L12, What do you call the small piles of hay standing in the field) Inf MI2, Coil.