A.Word.A.Day --churl

A.Word.A.Day

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Jan 30, 2023

This week’s theme
Words with multiple meanings

This week’s words
churl
dickey
dingbat
decollate
lave

Previous week’s theme
Words borrowed from other languages

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

If you look at this week’s words, you’d think a word sale was going on. Two for the price of one. Even three or four for one. Each of this week’s words has multiple meanings.

Sometimes, it’s because a word has developed multiple senses as it bounced around in the language for hundreds of years.

At other times, we have two distinct words, having different origins, that happened to end up with the same spelling over time (and, sometimes, the same pronunciation).

Whatever the cause, all of this week’s words come with one or more bonus meanings.

churl

PRONUNCIATION:

(chuhrl)

MEANING:

noun:
1. A rude person.
2. A miserly person.
3. A peasant.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Old English ceorl (peasant). Earliest documented use: 800.

USAGE:

“Either way, the thing is a gift horse, and, churl that I am, I mean to study its teeth.”
Joe Bennett; Start of My Golden Years; Dominion Post (Wellington, New Zealand) Mar 30, 2022.

“The churls still have their money in their pouches, or hidden in the ground.”
Harry Harrison; The Hammer & The Cross; Tor; 1993.

“A churl’s farm on the London Road is falling into my hands because there are no heirs.”
Nerys Jones; Godiva; Pan Macmillan; 2008.

See more usage examples of churl in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Kindness in ourselves is the honey that blunts the sting of unkindness in another. -Walter Savage Landor (30 Jan 1775-1864)

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