Wordie: Pierelle: Comments

Comment by mollusque, 5 months ago

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:49:32 +0000

Could be--the rocks would provide drainage so the posts wouldn't rot.

The derivation is from French pierraille, a "mass of broken or small stones, rubble, ballast" (Cassell's). Pierre-perdue is closer to a synonym for riprap.

Comment by reesetee, 5 months ago

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:50:04 +0000

Good question. So far as I can figure, the word appears mainly in documents on mining and drilling, so maybe they're meant for seating posts or some such? Just a guess.

Comment by mollusque, 5 months ago

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:17:37 +0000

Thanks, reesetee. I wonder what purpose the clay serves?

Comment by reesetee, 5 months ago

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:41:41 +0000

Ah, see? That's what Wordie's all about--prettifying our nomenclature. :-D

Mollusque, from what I can find, this word was apparently coined in the 1800s to describe "a mass of stones filling a ditch and covered with clay" (from E. H. Knight's The Practical Dictionary of Mechanics, 1874–77); riprap is apparently a foundation of stones built as a breakwater, revetment, embankment, etc. Nothing on the actual use of a pierelle.

Comment by pterodactyl, 6 months ago

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 13:33:04 +0000

I have one of these in my backyard. Before today, I called it "that ditch full of stones".

Thank you, Wordie, for once again prettifying my nomenclature!

Comment by bilby, 6 months ago

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 05:05:38 +0000

Because the rain here can come in sudden downpours, I often see these contraptions: under a downpipe, a circle of large stones filled in with a pile of pebbles, set in a drainage ditch. It works to prevent the rainwater scouring a giant erosion-hole in the ground and saves the cost of putting in an expensive/ugly big concrete gully trap. I would be happy to call one of these a pierelle. I'll have to find a landscape gardener or two and find out what they would call it.

Comment by bilby, 6 months ago

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 04:25:10 +0000

How many Wordies does it take to fill a ditch?

Comment by frindley, 6 months ago

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 03:18:11 +0000

Perhaps differentiated by the size of the ditch in question?

Comment by mollusque, 6 months ago

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 02:35:26 +0000

So how does pierelle different from riprap?

Comment by frindley, 6 months ago

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 01:40:25 +0000

The Wordie answer to international Sketch Crawl days?

Comment by bilby, 6 months ago

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:33:41 +0000

We should have a Wordie gathering somewhere. And do things like dig ditches and fill them with stones. And then instruct passers-by on the appropriate nomenclature.

Comment by reesetee, 6 months ago

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:04:46 +0000

Thanks, mollusque. You beat me to it.

Comment by mollusque, 6 months ago

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:55:53 +0000

In English "pierelle" seems to exist only in dictionaries. OED2 lists it as obsolete, with the only citation from another dictionary. Other than that, a Google Books search found it in the Century Dictionary CDC1 and a couple of mining glossaries.

Comment by yarb, 6 months ago

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:01:04 +0000

Gosh, I wonder why this is obsolete.

Comment by reesetee, 6 months ago

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:44:27 +0000

(Obsolete) A heap of stones filling a ditch.