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De Vaan instead favors Pinault 1987's proposal of a derivation from a diminutive of bonus(“good, brave”) (Proto-Italic*dwenos), i.e. bellus, with the sense developing from an originally euphemistic use.
The initial dw of duellum changed to b in bellum (compare the change from duis to bis, and duonos to bonus). See w:History of Latin § Other sequences. The archaic form duellum survived in poetry. In Medieval Latin, the sense shifted to a combat between, specifically, two contenders, under the influence of the (non-cognate) word duo(“two”).
In Plautus, who uses this form occasionally as an archaizing alternative to bellum, duel- generally scans as a single syllable, implying a pronunciation with the original cluster /dw/. However, in Amphitryon 189 (quoted below), if the manuscripts are not corrupt, the scansion with /du/ may occur (du.ël.lo‿ex.stinc.to). But an alternative explanation is that this line starts with dvel.lo.ex.stinc.to, with hiatus rather than elision of the final -o.
The innovative pronunciation with /du/ occurs in Ennius' Annales ("Hos pestis necuit, pars occidit illa duellis") and in the works of subsequent poets such as Ovid, Horace, and Statius.
The locative form duellī occurred as an archaic alternative to bellī with the same sense of "at war", "in wartime"; this form is found in the works of Plautus.
^ De Vaan, Michiel (2008) “bellum”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 70
^ The Amphitruo of Plautus, edited with introduction and notes by Arthur Palmer, 1890. page 22
^ "Dvellvm", Wendell Clausen, 1971. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 75, pp. 69-72.
^ Tenney Frank, 1904. Attraction of Mood in Early Latin.Page 56.
Further reading
“duellum”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
“duellum”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
duellum in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
duellum in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.