This week’s theme
Words that aren’t what they appear to be

This week’s words
windlass
monopolylogue
lustration
unicity
piepowder

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(PY-pow-duhr)

MEANING:

noun: A traveler, especially a traveling merchant.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Old French pie (foot) + poudre (powder, dust). Earliest documented use: 1436.

NOTES:

Back in the pre-sneaker, pre-sidewalk, pre-horseless-carriage era, travelers earned their name the hard way: one dusty footstep at a time. The term piepowder literally means dusty-foot, a poetic nod to the grime that clung to merchants as they wandered from fair to fair, hawking wares and dodging pickpockets. Itinerant merchants were the original pop-up shops. Because disputes over goods, weights, and prices were inevitable, special Courts of Piepowders were held on the spot to mete out justice, fairground-style. Think Judge Judy, but with more livestock and fewer microphones.

USAGE:

“I had the rogues up at the court of piepowder, and they will harm no more peaceful traders.”
Arthur Conan Doyle; The White Company; Smith, Elder & Co.; 1891.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: