puy

mountain, hill

Inherited from Middle French puy, from Old French puy (“hill, height”), pui, from Latin podium. Its current use as a regionalism referring to certain geographic features may be taken at least in part from Franco-Provençal; cf. also Occitan puèg and Catalan puig. In Old French, it had a somewhat different or more varied set of meanings (cf. also the feminine puie, puye, poye (“balustrade”), whence English pew through Anglo-Norman), later coming to be applied to mountains and hills especially in t