An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/Meiler

by Friedrich Kluge

Meiler, masculine, ‘charcoal-kiln,’ from late Middle High German meiler, mîler, masculine, ‘stack of wood for making charcoal’; the î of the Middle High German primary form is attested by Modern High German and Low German dialects. The word cannot be derived from Slavonic (Czech milíř, Polish mieleřz, ‘charcoal kiln,’ are themselves of German origin). Since it may have denoted originally a definite number of objects (compare Carinthian meiler, ‘a definite number of bars in a stack of pig-iron’), we might connect it with Latin mîliarium, ‘thousand’ (see the similar case of Decher).