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Pylcrafte: The Origins of "Pilcrow"
Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: contests, dictionaries, etymology, Latin, pilcrow, Pollux, punctuation, Walter William Skeat, Wynkyn de Worde
Pollux writes:
“Pilcrow” is a strange word for the punctuation mark used to signify new paragraphs. Lucy, one of the letter-writers in our ongoing contest in which you address the punctuation mark of your choice, had to look it up. We did, too. Where does it come from?
The words “pilcrow” and “paragraph” may have a common ancestor. Walter William Skeat, in his Notes On English Etymology (1904), theorizes how the Latin paragraphus (“paragraph”) eventually became the word “pilcrow.”
First, paragraphus became corrupted as paragraphe.
Paragraphe became parragraffe, to which an “excrescent t,” as Skeats calls it, was added at the end.
The variant pargrafte appears in the Ortus Vocabulorum, a Latin-English dictionary printed in 1500 by the delightfully named Wynkyn de Worde. The variant pylcrafte appears in another dictionary, the Promptorium Parvulorum et Clericorum.
So pargrafte became pylcrafte.
“This is rather violent,” Skeats admits, but cites the change of r to l as a common occurrence in Indo-European languages. “Due to mere laziness,” pylcraft or pilcrafte became corrupted as “pilcrow.” Now you know!
Declare your love for the pilcrow here.
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Hello! We're a small band of culture writers, editors, and artists based in New York and Los Angeles. Emdashes, which spent its formative years as a New Yorker fan blog, is our collection of conversations—mostly civilized—about magazines, movies, design, punctuation, and other things that stir us.
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Dashes, some say, “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like an em dash itself—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. All posts before October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.
The site was designed by House of Pretty with illustrations by Jesse R. Ewing.
Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (author of our web comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The Emdashes pencil logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Reviews: theater writing (for Time Out Chicago)
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, bon vivant, New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Slide show: the Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for NYCgo.com)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Homage: Celebrating lindy-hop legend Frankie Manning (for NYCgo.com)
- Inquiry: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Interviews: four up-and-coming designers under 30 (for Print)
- Profile: novelist and dance critic Laura Jacobs (for Newsday)
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Comments
What a great resource!