• pawky •
Pronunciation: paw-kee • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: (Scottish, Irish, and northern British) 1. Sly, shrewd, clever, cunning, roguishly so. 2. Wry, quirky, pucklike, e.g. sense of humor. 3. Haughty, insolent, impertinent.
Notes: Here is a word rarely heard outside the UK. It is the adjective for pawk "impertinence, insolence" back when it meant "a trick, cunning device" in Scotland and Ireland. Pawkily is the adverb, pawkiness, the noun, and pawkery refers to trickery, slyness, sauciness and cunning.
In Play: This word today means "roguishly clever": "I watched Lisa Threadneedle looking at Jes Kidding and I knew from her pawky smile that she read him like a book." Referring to humor, it can mean "wry": "Jes was known for his pawky humor which apparently didn't appeal to Lisa."
Word History: Today's Good Word is the adjective for pawk, which probably resulted from a mispronunciation of puck "mischievous spirit". Puck is also the name of a mischievous sprite in Celtic mythology and English folklore, who has all the characteristics expressed by today's Good Word. It comes from Old English puca, which by Middle English was pouke, a form the Scots and Irish may have picked up and converted to pawk. Puca descended from PIE (s)paug- "specter", source also of Icelandic púki "demon", German Spuk "spook", Dutch and English spook, Dutch spoken "to haunt", Danish spøge "to haunt", and Swedish spöke "ghost". This PIE word haunts only the Germanic languages; no evidence of it in any other IE language can be found. (Now a bow in gratitude to Mike Nichols for finding today's unusual Good Word and sharing it with us.)
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