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#77368 07/31/02 04:22 PM
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Pilgarlio or Pill'd Garlic (A). One whose hair has fallen off from dissipation. Stow says of one getting bald:
“He will soon be a peeled garlic like myself.” Generally a poor wretch avoided and forsaken by his fellows. The
editor of Notes and Queries says that garlic was a prime specific for leprosy, so that garlic and leprosy became
inseparably associated. As lepers had to pill their own garlie, they were nicknamed Pil-garlics, and anyone
shunned like a leper was so called likewise. (To pill = to peel; see Gen. xxx. 37.)
It must be borne in mind that at one time garlic was much more commonly used in England than it is now.


#77369 07/31/02 04:25 PM
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Pilot according to Scaliger, is from an old French word, pile (a ship).



#77370 07/31/02 04:34 PM
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Piping Hot Hot as water which pipes or sings.

Meaning boiling.


#77371 07/31/02 04:44 PM
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Piraeus, city, central Greece, in Attikí (Attica) Department, on the Gulf of Saronikós, near Athens. It is a major port and industrial center of Greece. The city has shipyards, flour mills, and factories in which agricultural equipment, textiles, rugs, glass, and chemicals are produced. It also has a school of industrial studies (1938). Piraeus was laid out about 450 BC, at which time it already served Athens as a port. In 86 BC, it was totally destroyed by the Romans, and it resumed importance only after Greece became independent in the 19th century. In 1834 the site was chosen as the port for modern Athens. Population (1991) 169,622.

I remember reading that in classical time, ships with cargoes were hauled on rollers from
the post to Athens, a considerable distance.






#77372 07/31/02 04:52 PM
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Pitchers Little pitchers have long ears. Little folk or children hear what is said when you little think it.
The ear of a pitcher is the handle, made in the shape of a man's ear. The handle of a cream-ewer and of other small jugs is quite out of proportion to the size of the vessel, compared with the handles of large jars.

"Little pitchers have big ears" used to be admonition from one adult to others to warn that children
might repeat what they are gossiping about.


#77373 07/31/02 04:59 PM
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Pittance An allowance of victuals over and above bread and wine. Anthony du Pinet, in his
translation of Pliny, applies the term over and over again to figs and beans. The word originally
comes from the people's piety in giving to poor mendicants food for their subsistence. (Probably
connected with pietas. Monkish Latin, pietancia; Spanish, pitar, to distribute a dole of food;
pitancero, one who distributes the dole, or a begging friar who subsists by charity.)

And now pittance means a stingy amount.


#77374 07/31/02 05:04 PM
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Plagiarist means strictly one who kidnaps a slave. Martial applies the word to the kidnappers of other men's
brains. Literary theft unacknowledged is called plagiarism. (Latin, plagrarius.)



#77375 07/31/02 05:08 PM
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Plantagenet from planta gemeta (broom-plant), the family cognisance first assumed by the Earl of Anjou, the
first of his race, during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, as a symbol of humility. (Sir George Buck: Richara III.)
Died 1622.



#77376 07/31/02 05:09 PM
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Plaster of Paris Gypsum, found in large quantities in the quarries of Montmartre, near Paris.



#77377 07/31/02 05:14 PM
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Plato His original name was Aristocles, but he was called Platon from the great breadth of his shoulders


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