Daily Archives: February 23, 2019

So. You know scoundrel and wastrel and custrel (well, maybe you don’t know that one) and kestrel and even doggerel. There’s this –rel suffix that English got from French–ereau and –erelle, and we use it for diminutive derivatives, especially pejorative ones. It sounds sort of like throat-hawking in another room, or a car peeling out on a gravel road nearby, or the faint echo of someone having been thrown in a well.

But pynt? What is that? Well, it’s an old spelling for paint or pint or pained or point. But which is it here?

Yes. Continue reading →