ETYMOLOGY
? Shakespeare’s Gray-Malkin, in “Macbeth,” 1605 = Gray cat
EXAMPLE
“… Your Muses, th’one a Youth, and one an Infant,
Gaue me two Panegericks at one Instant:
The first Pen, the first line it pleas’d to walke in,
Did make my Art a Rat, and like Grimalkin,
Or a kinde needfull Vermin-coursing Cat.
By Art I play, but will not care your Rat.
I thanke you that you did so soone determine,
To Anagram my Art into a Vermine,
For which I vow, if e’re you keeps a Dayrie,
Of (now and then) a Cheese I will impaire yee. …”
From: All the vvorkes of Iohn Taylor the water-poet
By John Taylor, 1630
PRONUNCIATION
grim-AL-kin
Lexicophilia 