This blog is for everyone who uses words.

The ordinary-sized words are for everyone, but the big ones are especially for children.



Tuesday 5 December 2017

Thing To Do Today: pounce.

I suppose it's mostly cats that pounce



but people pounce, too.

Cats tend to pounce on delicious meat-filled mice: humans pounce on a variety of other delicious things. It might be the perfect present for the difficult brother-in-law; the rarely-available sheep's milk cheese; the amusing-yet-tenderly-respectful greetings card for the girlfriend; or the stuffed toy for the chihuahua-obsessed toddler.

For those miserable people who never buy presents, have no unfulfilled desires, and don't eat mice, then pouncing can also involve punching decorative holes in metal from the reverse side.

For those miserable people whose metalwork days are over, pounce is also a fine powder, often made of cuttlefish bone, used either for drying ink or treating paper to stop ink from going splodgy. If the pounce is made of charcoal, then you can sprinkle it through holes in a piece of paper to transfer a pattern to another piece of paper underneath it.

I suppose you could transfer a pattern punched in metal in the same way, which would be a sort of double pouncing. But as far as I know no one has actually done it.

Thing To Do Today: pounce. The jumping-on-something word seems to comes from the Middle English punson, pointed tool (which is a bit odd, but there you go); the making holes in metal word is probably related, and comes from the Old French poinçonner; the powder word comes from the Old French ponce, from the Latin pūmes, pumice.






No comments:

Post a Comment

All comments are very welcome, but please make them suitable for The Word Den's family audience.