Role - roll

Two homophones that are sometimes confused are role (properly, with a circumflex as it comes from French; so in older convention, best in italic - rôle) and roll. They share a derivation, but have divergent meanings in present-day English: ultimately they come from a Latin noun, rota, meaning 'a wheel'. Its diminutive form rotula 'a little wheel', gives both modern words their '-l-', via the verb rotulare, 'to roll'. It is convenient to start with the verb 'to roll'.

• 'To roll' means 'to rotate or turn round'.
  • In the intransitive sense, it is a form of rotation or turning, as a capsizing ship (and a fairly young baby) may roll over. More normally, ships will roll in waves and aircraft in winds, or when turning: they may even be deliberately rotated 360 ⁰, for example in a victory roll by which fighter pilots of WWII celebrated a victory.
  • Transitively (i.e. with an Object), it means 'to move [something] by making it turn over and over'. A pencil may be passed to another student by rolling it across the table. It is a common enough way of moving heavy cylinders, like beer barrels or road rollers. Smaller rollers may be found in roller skates. On a smaller scale yet, gamblers may roll dice, and an egg may roll off a table on to the floor.. More statically, one can roll up a substance: carpets and cigarettes are rolled, and smokers can roll their own cigarettes.
• Most meanings of the noun 'a roll' follow from the transitive use of the verb.
  • The commonest meaning for most HE students is "A piece of parchment, paper, or the like, which is written upon or intended to contain writing, etc., and is rolled up for convenience of handling or carrying; a scroll" (OED s.v. roll n.¹).
    • Many lists are called rolls. Formal memorials of those who die in battle are Rolls of Honour; in schools, keeping a record of attendance is still known as 'calling the roll' (or 'taking the Register') although the list of the class itself is no longer a scroll but a book. In military history, these are muster rolls. The official list of various professions may be called the Roll: a solicitor who has been struck off the roll is no longer entitled to practise.
    • Many primary sources for medieval history are rolls of this sort: for example, the Parliamentary Rolls record statutes passed in that period, and Pipe Rolls record government finances from the twelfth century to 1833. Records of many trials and other court hearings are contained in Court Rolls, like the Chancery Rolls, and the judge responsible for keeping such records is still called the Master of the Rolls, though now having no record-keeping duties.
  • A roll of carpet is easier to carry than a flat one: cloth is stored for sale in rolls; photographic films and bandages are often kept in rolls; small circular 'cakes' of bread dough are called rolls, or in parts of the North of England, bread-rolls, and various cakes made in flat rectangles and then rolled up are called 'rolls' - with jam spread on sponge-cake, they are Swiss rolls. In Hollywood films, gangsters and businessmen may carry their money in rolls, or wads of notes wrapped up together, from which a payment may be peeled. A forward roll is a manoeuvre by which a gymnast, tucking up into a small size and with the head on the ground in front, rotates round the axis of the waist - a somersault, or, to some children, a 'tippy-tail'.
• A role is originally and literally a part, or character, in a play, etc, performed by one actor. (The word is derived from the French for roll (rôle), and refers to the rolled up script from which the actor learned the lines, or words, of the part.) The word role may be used figuratively for any forms of function: of people, one can say, that 'their job may require several different roles', as a schoolteacher sometimes plays the role of a parent, sometimes of a policeman, sometimes of a friend; and in social sciences it may refer to "a pattern of behaviour which is shared by most occupants of a position, and which comes to be expected of them" (M. Argyle, The Psychology of Interpersonal Behaviour iv. 73 (1967), cited in OED). The meaning may be extended to non-human living or non-living things: we may examine the role that ants play in woodland ecology, or the role of computers in modern warfare.

Some less used meanings are a roll of thunder: a 'thunderclap' or 'peal of thunder - an individual sound of thunder, as if a cannon-ball were being rolled across the sky. Similarly, a drum-roll is a sustained repeated beating of a drum, such as the one at the beginning of the British National Anthem God Save the Queen. A roll in the hay is an act of sexual intercourse (the form of popular music called rock and roll was originally regarded as obscene, as both nouns were slang terms for the same thing; and both have associated transitive verbs). A Rolls is a slang shortening of Rolls-Royce, the prestige brand of motor-car, also known colloquially as a Roller. A roll-up is a hand-made cigarette.