Category: Word of the Day – P

ETYMOLOGY
from a first element of uncertain origin (see note below) + cock (mature male of the domestic chicken)

EXAMPLE (for n. 1.)
“…Lear.
Death traytor, nothing could haue subdued nature
To such a lownes, but his vnkind daughters,
Is it the fashion that discarded fathers,
Should haue thus little mercy on their flesh,
Iudicious punishment twas this flesh
Begot those Pelicane daughters.

Edg.
Pilicock sate on pelicocks hill, a lo lo lo.

Foole.
This cold night will turne vs all to fooles & madmen. …”

From: True Chronicle Historie of the Life and Death of King Lear and his three daughters
By William Shakespeare, 1608

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin  pessimus (worst_ + -ize, after optimize

EXAMPLE
“…The rabid rage of a losing cause precipitating and pessimising its own loss…”

From: The Daily Telegraph
September, 1862

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin porcus (a pig, hog) + literarum (letters, written knowledge, literature)

EXAMPLE
“…Epics he wrote and scores of rebusses,
All as neat as old Turnebus’s;
Eggs and altars, cyclopædias,
Grammars, prayer books – oh! ’twere tedious,
Did I but tell the half, to follow me,
Not the scribbling bard of Ptolemy,
No – nor the hoary Trismegistus,
(Whose writings all, thank heaven! have miss’d us,)
E’er fill’d with lumber such a ware-room
As this great “porcus literarum!” …”

From: Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems
By Thomas Moore, 1807
“The Devil Among The Scholars”

ETYMOLOGY
possibly a variant of prickle (vb.)

EXAMPLE
“…I’ll gar your Daup dirle. Footnote: prinkle, smart. …”

From: A complete Collection of Scottish Proverbs
By James Kelly, 1721

ETYMOLOGY
from Greek πολυπράγµων )busy about many things, meddlesome, officious),
from  πολυ- (poly– comb. form) + πρᾶγμα (thing done)

EXAMPLE
“… till this Polypragmon troubled us with his Blankes and matters of Estate
we lyved in Scot: peacably, administred the sacramentes, and
preached daly the trewe will and worde of oure savioure Jesus …”

From: In Spanish influences in Scottish history, Appendix (1596)
By John Rawson Elder, 1920

ETYMOLOGY
from pam ( a card-game in which the knave of trumps was the highest trump card) + child

EXAMPLE
“…Yet rake I am, and abominably so, for a person that begins to wrinkle reverently. I have sat up twice this week till between two and three with the Duchess of Grafton, at loo, who, by the way, has got a pam-child this morning; and on Saturday night I supped with Prince Edward at my Lady Rochford’s, and we stayed till half an hour past three…”

From: The Letters of Horace Walpole
Volume 3, Letter 9 To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, Jan. 14, 1760

ETYMOLOGY
from peep + -y

EXAMPLE (for adj. 1)
“…An individual of the latter kind is distinguished in his earliest petticoats – even before he has well left the nursery. He is then a poor, peepy wretch, with blear eyes, and one everlasting dingy night-cap. constantly sitting by the fire, to the great annoyance of the nurse, who frequently declares him to be more of an infant than even his younger brother the baby…”

From: Chambers Edinburgh Journal
Conducted by William Chambers, and Robert Chambers,
Volume I No. 49, Saturday, January 5, 1833,
‘The Domestic Man’

ETYMOLOGY
from parvi- comb. form of Latin parvus (small) + scient (knowledgeable, skilled);
probably after omniscient (having infinite knowledge)

EXAMPLE
“…It is called his causal body. Neither can do anything without one. The aggregate of the causal bodies of all souls, that is to say, distributive ignorances, make up I’s’wara’s causal body, which is illusion. Strange to say, the ignorance of a single soul renders that soul subject to misapprehension, and keeps it parviscient, parvipotent, &c; but the aggregation of these individual ignorances, or illusion, allows I’s’wara to be exempt from misapprehension, and communicate to him such attributes as omniscience and omnipotence…”

From: A Rational Refutation of the Hindu Philosophical Systems
By Nehemiah Nilakantha S’Astri’ Gore
Translation by Fitz-Edward Hall, 1862

PRONUNCIATION
par-VISS-ee-uhnt

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin pulchritudin-,  pulchritudo (beauty) + -ous

EXAMPLE
“…Returning to the pulchritudinous Fanny Newlove, she was reclining on a settee, listening with all her ears, to the ‘out pourings’ of a personage, whose appearance at once apprehended my attention, as indicative of anything except the clean potato …”

From: The Anglo-American Magazine
From July to December, 1854
Vol V, ‘The Purser’s Cabin’

PRONUNCIATION
pul-kruh-CHOO-duh-nuhss

ETYMOLOGY
formed by compounding pinch- (comb. form. a nip, a squeeze; to nip, to squeeze)

EXAMPLE
“…It were lamentable to tel what misery the Rattes and Mise endured in this hard world, how when all supply of vittualls failed them, they went a Boot-haling one night to Sinior Greedinesse bed-chamber, where finding nothing but emptines and vastitie, they encountred (after long inqusition) with a cod-peece, wel dunged and manured with greace (which my pinch-fart penie-father had retaind from his Bachelorship, vntill the eating of these presents).…”

From: Pierce Penilesse, His Supplication to the Divell
By Thomas Nashe, 1592