words and pipistrelle and pilular and pinene or pinnace and pilose and pillow

The words I want to examine today include piki, pilgarlic, pillion, pilose, pilular, pinene, pinnace, and pipistrelle. Unfortunately, from the perspective of "covering" the dictionary, I also got distracted by some word from the OED, which may slip into our conversation. But, rest assured, I won't charge you for them.

1. Pilgarlic. If you only read the Collegiate, you would get the following definition: "a bald-headed man" or a man looked on "with humorous contempt or mock pity." Of course, these are correct, but they don't provide the "picture" behind the word, a picture which makes it come alive. The word comes from the verb "pill" and the noun "garlic." To "pill" means to "peel, strip, pluck." Thus a "pill garlic" is a "peeled garlic," or a garlic without its outer covering, which looks like a bald man. The first references to the term, from the early 17th century, import a descriptive connotation. From 1605: "He will soon be a peeled garlic like myself." From 1619 we have almost a medical description: "The Hunting of the Pox: a pleasant Discourse betweene the Authour and Pild-Garlicke, wherein is declared the Nature of the Disease, how it came, and how it may be cured." By the end of the 17th century, however, the word could be used derogatorily. "Pill-garlick, a pitiful sneaking Fellow out of Countenance." Even though the word is hardly used at all today, I think it should return to the traditional meaning of a bald person. From the Oxford Times in 1978: "BBC 1 offers those pilgarlic gentlemen Yul Brynner (in an adventure movie) and Telly Savalas (as Kojak)..." Ah, but then the 1980s and 1990s saw the pilgarlic basketball player, thanks to MJ (By the way, the Century spells pilgarlic as pilgarlick).

2. Piki. Oops, out of order, but no matter. Piki is bread made from maize-meal and baked in thin sheets by the Hopi Indians in the SW US. The Hopi spelling is actually "Piiki," which doesn't seem quite fair to all spellers because it seems that the most knowledgeable person (i.e., one who knows Hopi) would be penalized for his knowledge and possibly even spell the word incorrectly. Thus, even though I have "invested" a lot into spelling bees, I sometimes think there is little reason for concluding that a word should be spelled as the dictionary has it.

3. Pillion. The only definition the Collegiate gives for this word is "saddle," even though it can refer to a woman's saddle of a motorcycle or bicycle saddle. Yet the Century has four usages of the noun. Rather than take the time to work through all the definitions, we will only examine two. A pillion was a cap or hat, "spec. a cap worn by a scholar, esp. a doctor of divinity." The typical meaning is of a woman's saddle. From a 1526 will: "To Elizabeth my doughter my pullion of wolsted." Or, from 1626: "The Irish...use no sadles, but either long narrow pillions bumbasted, or bare boardes of that fashion." The word bumbast, from which we get bombast, is interesting. As we know, if someone speaks with bombast, he is speaking in a blustery manner or arrogantly. Originally bumbast was the "soft down of the cotton-plant; raw cotton." This was used for padding for clothes or beds. I liked a 1582 quotation: "Wet a little Bumbast in our Caustick." What is a Caustick? A substance which burns and destroys living tissue when brought in contact with it. From the same 1582 source: "Costicke [note the different spellings of the term in the same book]..beeyng laid on the sore doeth mortefie it."

4. Pillionaire. That is more than enough on pillion, but I couldn't pass over pillionaire, in the OED but absent elsewhere. A pillionaire is a female occupant of the perch where a pillion is placed. I chuckled when I read a 1997 attestation of it: "Fast lady Isabella Hughes became an instant pillionaire after she and husband Brian landed a lotto jackpot." I think the term has possibilities--for someone richer than a billionaire but poorer than a trillionaire. Pill Gates might fit that category about now.

5. Pillow Capital. I just couldn't resist this one either, because of my love for classical architecture. On Ionic columns, between the square abacus, which acts as a kind of buffer between the column and the entablature above, and the echinus, which is a quarter-round portion of the column (also known as the ovolo) just above the consistently-shaped column, is the volute or scroll. From early days in English architectural history (1664), this scroll was also known as the pillow capital. "The Return [of the Volute] or Pillow betwixt the Abacus and Echinus resembles the side-plaited tresses of Womens haire." The volute looks like a pillow or cushion between the two; hence the name. Sorry for the digression...

6. Pilose means covered with soft hair. I like the 1994 quotation using the word from Esquire: "The heavily forested blonds have thin hairs, and the less abundantly pilose redheads have thick, coarse hairs." Why should anyone object to someone's reading popular magazines?

7-10. Pilular means "of or relating to a pill; of the nature or resembling pills." I suppose you don't need to know the following quotation, but I will give it to you anyway. From 1938: "In the smaller ruminants..the feces occur usually in pilular form." Just think what thought will run through your mind next time someone gives you a medication in pilular form to take...Pinene is "either of two liquid isomeric unsaturated bicyclic terpene hydrocarbons." Oops. Hope I don't get lots of those words, though I might not mind riding it. A pinnace is a light sailing ship, which became a historical artifact after about 1700, but was a two-masted ship often "in attendance on a larger vessel as a tender, scout, etc." You can find a picture of one here. Finally, for today, we have pipistrelle, which is a small species of bat, known as the Vesperugo pipistrellus, common throughout Europe.

Let that suffice for now.

1885